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16
HOUSING.
Overcrowding Survey.
The provisions of the Housing Act of 1935 which relate to
overcrowding are familiar to most of the Council, and especially to
the members of the sub-committee who were appointed to deal with
the survey carried out under the Act. Numerous reports were presented
to the Council upon the general provisions of the Act and
special reports were made upon the overcrowding revealed by the
survey. It may therefore be desirable to deal again in a general
way with the overcrowding provisions of the Act before the details
of the survey are given.
The principal object of the Act is laid down in its first sentence,
which states that it is "an Act to make further and better
provision for the abatement and prevention of overcrowding
As an administrative measure, the Act differs in many respects
from previous Housing Acts. In this Act the primary object is the
relief of overcrowding; in former Acts overcrowding was shelved
or made subsidiary to the requirements of town planning, town
amenities, &c. In the Act of 1935 not only under certain conditions
is overcrowding an offence punishable by fine in the case of
both the occupier and the landlord, but it also provides the machinery
for the enforcement of the provisions against overcrowding.
Until the present Act, there was no way of reducing overcrowding
which was workable, or which did not produce worse conditions,
than those it sought to remedy. Now that we have the remedy
it is our business to apply it. The Act will not work itself, and it
will be some time before the ideal can be attained. There may
have to be some compromise between what should be done and
what can be done; between what legally can be enforced, and
what socially it is advisable to enforce.
Although a definite standard would appear to be essential
in the prevention of overcrowding, before the passage of this Act
there was no standard which applied to the whole country. There
were certain standards laid down for different purposes, and local
authorities made bye-laws for common lodging-houses, and for
houses-let-in-lodgings. For army barracks 600 cubic feet per person
is laid down, and rooms occupied both day and night in common
lodging-houses must have 400 cubic feet per head of space as
must non-textile workrooms during overtime.
The earliest bye-laws for houses-let-in-lodgings were adopted
in Acton in 1899, and under these 400 cubic feet for each adult and
200 cubic feet for each child under 10 had to be provided if the rooms