View report page

9
stitute a clearance or even an improvement area. Although some
of the houses in our district cannot be included in a clearance area
scheme, it does not follow that the conditions are satisfactory. In
order to obtain a closing order we must prove that the structural
condition of the house or its environment is such as to render it
unfit for human habitation. Although the houses structurally may
be in a fair condition the state of the houses may be deplorable,
and although there may be no legal over-crowding the houses have
for too many inmates for the common decencies to be observed.
In some respects the housing question in and around London
differs from that in the provinces, but one aspect of the problem
is common to all localities. Over-crowding has always been associated
with what is called the slum problem and usually it was
one of the worst features. At present I mean by the term overcrowding
simply the over-crowding of people in a house, and not
the over-crowding of houses on a site. This kind of over-crowding
can and does occur in a house which is structurally quite fit. The
solution of over-crowding is not therefore the simple matter of
providing more houses. You cannot abolish over-crowding by
pulling down houses which are supposed to be unsatisfactory from
a structural point of view. If that could be done we should not be
faced, with a difficult problem. I have explained in previous reports
that we have no area which could be scheduled as a clearance area
or an improvement area. There were some houses which had
become unfit and have been closed. There are other houses in the
district which are becoming old and may have to be dealt with,
but there are no areas in which a considerable number of the
houses are structurally unfit for human habitation. The inhabited
part of the district is comparatively new; the majority of the
houses have been built within recent years; we have not received
a heritage in the form of courts, narrow alleys, back-to-back houses,
cellar dwellings, and other conditions which are associated with
slum areas in the older industrial centres. We sometimes hear
remarks from well intentioned people that they would like to blow
up all the houses in certain roads. One may sympathise with the
views expressed by these people and yet remain entirely sceptical
of the results which would accrue from such drastic action. Overcrowding
in this Borough is more a matter of economic and social
factors than it is a sanitary problem, and the solution is not so
simple as the pulling down of old houses and the erection of new
ones. Though possibly of minor importance it may be well to define
what we mean by over-crowding in a house. There are many and
varied standards. The standard adopted when an attempt is made
gauge the extent of over-crowding from an examination of the
Census reports is based upon the number of inhabitants occupying
a room. It is assumed that a house is over-crowded if the number