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47
Another difficulty frequently met is that of the single person, usually
an old age pensioner, occupying as principal tenant one room in a house
which will accommodate two or more families, and who sub-lets a room
or rooms to either several other single persons or to an old couple with
no children. In the majority of these cases the principal tenant has at
one time occupied the whole house and brought up a family in it, but
on the death of the husband or wife and the marriage of the children
they are left alone in the house with no income beyond the ten shillings
weekly Old Age Pension, and in order to live and make ends meet they
sub-let. These are the persons who should be occupying a one-roomed
flat in order to make more accommodation for the families with children
and who really require a house, but it is difficult to see how these old
people are to pay the rent of a single flat and live on nothing more than
ten shillings a week. Under the conditions related, we find they are
doing quite well and are living rent free, but such indiscriminate letting
makes it impossible for the Authority to insist on separate washing,
cooking, food storage and lavatory accommodation for each separate
family in order to comply with the Bye-law standards.
Last year I discussed the difficulty of re-housing the large family,
and it would appear that, from what is stated above, both problems
should be considered side by side.
Recently, we have found that several landlords, upon receiving a
notice under the Bye-laws to provide the facilities required by those
Bve-laws, have, in houses which they have let to two families, been
able to evade the requirements by making one tenant the principal,
and allowing the second family to become the sub-tenant.
The Authority can only partially overcome this difficulty by enforcing
separate cooking and food storage accommodation as provided
by Section 184 of the Public Health (London) Act, 1936, and then only
in so far as it is practicable.