View report page

56
accredited sphere of usefulness, and such action is much to be
commended; but in the long run it is a palliative, which deals
only with the pressing and urgent needs of the moment. It does
not take the long view.
Finsbury pays its proportion of the housing rate made by the
London County Council, but apparently very few of its inhabitants
have been taken into the houses erected by the London
County Council in "outer" London, possibly because they cannot
afford to pay the rents demanded.
In the meantime the housing shortage in Finsbury is poignant,
distressing and insistent. The massed grouped "model''
dwellings appear to be the only type which, if erected in the
borough, offer the prospect of an economic return on the money
expended. And if the Council erected such dwellings, then by
gradually housing and accommodating the displaced tenants by
a series of grading or zoning operations done in stages, the
improvement effected might eventually, to a slight extent, even
reach and touch the poorest resident.
One index that the housing problem is now more acute in
the borough consists in the relatively large number of letters
and personal applications now received by the* Public Health
Department, asking for help in finding rooms or to be referred to
suitable housing agencies with vacant tenements.
Ten or twelve years ago these applications were quite rare;
now they are very common. And they sometimes disclose an
amount of discomfort, and of distress which seriously indict the
housing policy of the nation; and of fortitude under suffering,
which do honour to the name of Briton.
Here are extracts from two letters:—
"I am writing on behalf of the shorted of houses. I
have a wife and 8 children in two very small rooms measuring
12 feet by 10, owing to the lack of spase 4 of my children
sleep in one bed 4 in the other. 1 have been within 20 miles
of London to seek for a place. I have got my name on the