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87
Housing of the Working Classes.
During the year, 51 new houses, and 18 model dwellings comprising 133 tenements
were completed, and were afterwards occupied by 2,238 persons. There was,
therefore, more accommodation provided than there was an increase of the estimated
population.
The house famine in the Borough two years ago forced up the rents abnormally
high. This was one, if not the most important, factor in the causation of overcrowding.
For some reasons, there is at the present time plenty of house accommodation
in the district. There are of course more empty houses in some parts
than in the others. One reason is the number of new houses that were built during
the year, which included a number of large blocks of model buildings. A large
number of these dwellings have been constructed during recent year's. This is, however,
far from being responsible for so many of the empty houses. Among the
number of dwellings completed during the year was Mann's Buildings, which were
erected on the insanitary area cleared by the late Limehouse District Board of
Works, and known as Queen Catherine Court Area. The Local Government Board
held an enquiry on March 16th, 1893, and approved of the scheme in October of
that year. Immediately afterwards the necessary steps were taken for the clearance
of the site. It thus took more than twelve years from the time that the official
representation was made by the Medical Officer of Health in 1891 to the time the
new buildings were constructed and occupied. The clearing of an insanitary area
under the Housing of the Working Classes Act is bound to have a tendency to increase
overcrowding in neighbouring houses. It is true that all the persons displaced
are not obliged to live in the vicinity, and many probably leave the neighbourhood.
In this district, where so many men are employed at the docks, wharves, etc.,
where they are engaged to unload ships frequently in the small hours of the
morning, they cannot possibly live far from the river side. If their houses be
demolished they are bound to be factors in the causation of overcrowding and high
rents in the districts adjoining. When new buildings are therefore erected on the
site that has been cleared, they will be occupied by a different class of people to the
persons displaced. In the first place, the rents that were formerly paid in the slums
were very much less than the rents that must be charged for the new rooms, in order
to prevent a loss on the undertaking. Even if the rents of the new dwellings remain
the same, or are only slightly higher, I doubt whether many of the people
originally displaced would reside in them, as this class of people generally resent
the regulations which are naturally enforced for the well-being of such new
dwellings.