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25
(b) Housing Conditions.
(1) General Observations.-—Housing conditions in Hornsey
have been the subject of close attention by the Health Committee
and its officers during 1930.
The general standard of housing is high. The district is of
modern development as a good-class residential suburb of
London. The Borough is justly proud of its fine streets,
roads and avenues, its well-kept houses and gardens,
its beautiful open spaces. Yet there is cause for anxiety.
Hornsey, like every other town in the outer ring of London, has
its " housing problem." The problem is overcrowding, and is
caused by outside factors, largely beyond local control. Two
important factors are constantly operating — the tendency of
families in London to move outwards into the suburbs as the
more central parts of the Metropolis become converted to business
premises; and the general tendency of industry in England
to drift southwards. Middlesex is becoming one of the most
industrial counties in England. New factories are springing up
almost every month along the great new arterial roads of the
county.
We have, therefore, on the one hand, the natural increase
in population, together with these outside or unnatural causes
of increase, and, on the other hand, a fully developed district
with literally not one acre of land on which to build new houses.
In addition, there is the desire of large sections of the population
to occupy smaller houses.
The result is the wholesale conversion of good-class residences
once in single occupation into flats, sub-let rooms, houses
let in lodgings, or tenements.
Homsey's housing problem is therefore not unfit houses,
unhealthy areas, or shortage of houses, but the much more
difficult problem of preventing the district from undergoing the
change in social status which has overcome large areas in the
adjoining parts of the County of London.
The district has, however, certain natural advantages, which
tend towards stabilising its good housing conditions and social
character. It is situated on the " Northern Heights " at an
elevation of, roughly, 200 to 400 feet above sea level, which gives