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29
SECTION IV.—Housing.
General Housing Conditions in the Borough.—The
requirement of the Ministry of Health for a statement under this
heading can be best met by the following extract from a report
which I submitted to your Council early in 1926, when the
question of erecting the Grove Park Estate was under consideration:—
At the beginning may I say that it is exceedingly difficult to form
any true estimate of the existing need of houses in the Borough below
a reasonable standard of fitness, and also it is difficult to produce exact
figures of the number of premises overcrowded without a census of the
worst portions of the district being taken. It may safely be assumed,
however, that the worst cases of hardship caused by overcrowded conditions
are present in one, two and three-roomed tenements. It will be
readily understood that if the number of persons housed in those tenements
averages two or more for each room, difficulties in finding adequate
sleeping accommodation are inevitable.
The Census of 1921 affords the only actual statistics available for
the Borough, and the following has been extracted from the official
Returns :—
813 families, consisting of 2 or more persons, were occupying oneroomed
tenements.
761 families, consisting of 4 or more persons, were occupying tworoomed
tenements.
784 families, consisting of 6 or more persons, were occupying threeroomed
tenements.
From the above it may be estimated in round figures that some
10,000 persons were in 1921 badly housed.
We have no certain means of judging as to the extent to which
these conditions have improved or otherwise, although the statistics obtained
by routine house-to-house inspection of a certain type of house
may be considered to afford some indication of present conditions. We
have on our register 135 streets in which it is customary to carry out
a periodical inspection, comprising about 5.500 houses. During the past two
years. 2,600 of these houses have been inspected and the results of our
enquiries recorded. It was found that 845 of this number contained
two families and 204 contained three or more families. It was also
ascertained that 450 families living in tenements consisting of three
rooms or less averaged two or more persons per room. If it can be
. assumed that similar conditions exist in the remaining 2,900 houses on
our register, it follows that about 950 families in these streets alone
average two or more persons per room, and there is no doubt that to
a lesser extent similar conditions exist in homes of a better class than
those to which routine inspection has been applied and in respect of
which no statistics are obtainable.