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146
so small as to render them ineligible for accommodation in dwellings other than those
of the smallest types.
Method of
allotting
accommodation.
Before the war it was the general practice of the Council, upon the receipt of
satisfactory references, to accept tenants in the order in which their applications
were received. Preference was only given (i.) to persons displaced through the
acquisition by the Council of property for clearance or improvement schemes or other
public purposes, and (ii.) to persons already residing in London. These preferences
still hold good. Since the war the Council has, from time to time, given temporarily
further preferences, other circumstances being equal, to persons who gave up their
homes in order to join H.M. Forces, or to undertake work of national importance,
to firemen required to vacate quarters at fire-stations, and to certain other small
classes of people.
In order to make the full use of all available accommodation the Council has
found it necessary to adopt the following general principles:—(i.) Applicants are
to be allotted dwellings not larger than are deemed to be sufficient to meet the
reasonable needs of their families, taking into consideration the sex and ages of the
children and the bedroom accommodation required ; (ii.) no person residing alone
is to be accepted as a tenant; and (iii.) not more than two rooms are to be allotted
to a married couple without children or two single women living together. In
some cases the circumstances of the applicants, owing to ill-health, overcrowding,
the insanitary state of their homes or to other conditions have been such that it
has been decided to grant special preference in exceptionally hard cases of
this kind.
It has been necessary during the year to decline to entertain some applications
on the ground that the income of the applicants was inadequate to enable them to
pay the rents, although these are less than remunerative and entail heavy expenditure
out of public funds. Under the tenancy agreements sub-letting is not
allowed, and tenants are not allowed to take lodgers.
New
dwellings
provided
daring the
year.
Of the 857 additional dwellings provided during the year, 596 are situated at
Becontree, 64 on the White Hart-lane estate, 72 at Roehampton, 80 on the Tabardgarden
estate, and 45 on the Collingwood estate, which is being erected to rehouse
persons displaced by the Brady-street clearance scheme. The tenements on the
Tabard-garden estate and the Collingwood estate are of the block dwelling type,
while all the others are of the cottage or cottage-flat type. On the basis of two
persons a room the post-war dwellings occupied at the end of March, 1924, provided
accommodation for 61,742 persons.
Total accom-
modation
provided.
The pre-war dwellings comprise 6,543 tenements in block dwellings, 3,148
cottages and 294 cottage-flats, providing accommodation for 57,007 persons on the
basis of two persons a room. There are also the three lodging-houses (Bruce House,
Carrington House, and Parker-street House), with cubicles providing accommodation
for 1,878 persons. The pre-war accommodation thus provided was for 58,885
persons. Adding to this figure the accommodation in the post-war dwellings, the
Council's dwellings and lodging-houses provided, at the end of March, 1924, accommodation,
calculated on the basis of two persons a room, for 120,627 persons. The
actual population on that date was approximately 76,000 persons, which is greater
than the population of Bath, almost as great as that of Ipswich, and practically the
same as that of the metropolitan borough of Finsbury.
Rehousing.
Owing to war conditions the Council did not during the years 1915-20 carry
out any displacements consequent upon street improvement, clearance or education
schemes. During the years 1920-23, however, the Council rehoused 521 persons,
the majority of whom had been displaced under the Tabard-street clearance scheme,
and the remainder under the Brady-street, Bethnal-green, clearance scheme. During
1923-24, 589 persons were rehoused, of whom some had been displaced by the
Tabard-street scheme, some by the Brady-street scheme, and some by the Warestreet,
Shoreditch, scheme. Of these 589 persons 164 were accommodated on the