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Concurrently with an increase of 7.18 per cent. in the number of structurally separate dwellings
occupied in the borough since 1921, the number of private families has grown by 10.96 per cent.
The average number of families per occupied dwelling in 1921 was 1.59, and in 1931 this figure had
risen to 1.65.
Of the 47,713 private families in Kensington, 56.5 per cent have their correspondence delivered
through communal letter boxes and share a common water supply and common sanitary
arrangements.

The number of private families in the borough has increased in the last intercensal period
by 4,712, or 10.9 per cent., but the population in those families has increased by only 92 persons.
The average size of a private family in Kensington in 1921 was 3.68 persons, whereas in 1931 it
was only 3.32.
This increase in the number of private families, coupled with an almost unchanged number of
persons therein, is an inevitable consequence of the maintenance of a high marriage rate in conjunction
with a steady reduction in the birth rate.
Although the number of rooms per family has decreased from 4.52 to 4.13, the number of
persons per room (0.80) is slightly lower than it was ten years ago (0.81).
Without taking into consideration the type of accommodation and the actual size of rooms,
the figures justify the inference that, since the over-all average person per room density has been
reduced, the Kensington population is on the whole better housed that it was in 1921. This is no
doubt the case; but it must be remembered that the continual breaking up of families into smaller
units with fewer children has made the population harder to house by reducing the number of those
types of families which are economically housed and increasing those which are more expensively
accommodated. A family of two or three persons either have or would like to have a sitting-room
and a kitchen, whereas a family of six or seven persons still want only one sitting-room and one
kitchen. A man and wife with six young children (a population of eight) can manage well with
three bedrooms and one kitchen—a total of four rooms; whereas two separate families, each consisting
of a man and wife and two children (a population of eight) require six or eight rooms.
Thus the continued reduction in the average size of families is in itself amortizing a portion of
the additional housing accommodation built in the last decade, some part of that provision having
been absorbed in coping with the effect of changes adverse in themselves to the maintenance of
satisfactory housing conditions.