View report page

106
Misunderstanding, however, may easily arise if it is thought that all these
2,000 rooms are basement dwellings of the worst type. The conditions to
which an underground room must conform before it can be legally used as an
habitual sleeping place are contained in Section 18 of the Housing Act, 1925,
and the Regulations in respect of such rooms passed by the Shoreditch
Borough Council in November, 1932 and approved by the Ministry of Health
in the following February. These conditions are exacting and it may be
reasonably assumed that very few indeed of the 4,000 odd rooms in this
Borough, the floor of which is more than three feet below the street, are so
constructed as to qualify them to be used without alteration as habitual
sleeping places.
The question to be decided in giving a rough estimate of the number of
these rooms that are illegally occupied can accordingly be re-stated in the
simple form of "How many underground rooms are used as habitual sleeping
places?" It is thought probable that half are so used, making an estimated
total of 2,000.
Of these rooms a small number are of the worst type, being completely
underground and badly lighted and ventilated to a degree that well merits
the worst that has been said about dwellings of this kind. Such rooms as
these are capable of being dealt with under the Public Health (London) Act
only if let as a separate dwelling, and this proviso has the effect of rendering
that Act inapplicable in a large number of cases.
The majority of the rooms comprising the estimated total of 2,000
illegally occupied cannot be considered to constitute a grave menace to
health. Though it is most desirable that the legal provisions relating to such
rooms should be strictly enforced, it must be recognized that in all the
circumstances of this Borough much time must elapse and the general housing
problem assume a very different complexion before it will be possible to report
that the illegal ocupation of underground rooms as at present defined has
ceased to exist.
Apart from such general considerations as the foregoing, the Housing
Committee were called upon to decide what action it was proposed to take
regarding certain underground rooms the occupants of which had made
application to the London County Council for other accommodation. The
London County Council have recently adopted the practice of writing to the
Borough Council in such cases to ask whether or not the underground room
to be vacated is one in which action under Section 20 of the Housing Act,
1930, might properly be taken. As a result the Housing Committee have
considered reports upon a number of rooms. In respect of seven of these
Closing Orders were made, and in one the Order was determined upon the
room having been made fit.