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VIII.—SANITARY ADMINISTRATION.
HOUSING.
The section dealing with housing in my last annual report
was confined almost entirely to figures, and no attempt was
made to discuss the position with regard to housing generally.
Later in the year I was asked by the Ministry of Health to amplify
my report, particularly with regard to certain points. I, therefore,
propose to discuss these points in this year's report.
This is an industrial borough, and practically all the inhabitants
earn their living by manual labour. It is also a riverside
borough, and much of the labour is casual and uncertain, and
there is a high rate of unemployment. Very few well-to-do
people and few professional folk live in the borough, and such
of these as dwell here do so only on account of the exigencies of
their work. It is thus true that while there are still many large
houses which were in former days inhabited by the comparatively
well off, these houses are at the present time, occupied in almost
every case by two or more families. This is quite often the
case also with regard to four, five and six-roomed cottages,
which constitute a large part of the property of the borough
In many cases there is difficulty in securing proper provision for
cooking and washing and adequate water closet accommodation.
While the question of registering these houses as tenement
houses and applying the bye-laws is always considered, yet in
many cases it appears to me that such registration is hardly
justified. It is the practice generally to register a house as a
tenement house where it is inhabited by three or more families'
and where no responsible person lives on the premises, but
even then, the house is not registered if the property is in good
condition and the tenants are respectable. The total number of
houses on the register at present is 63; three have been removed
and 11 have been registered during this year. A point which
arises in this connection is that quite a number of houses are
let out by an absent tenant, in single so-called "furnished rooms,"
at rents which are exorbitant and highly profitable to the tenant,
although the actual owner may be charging the "tenant" a