View report page

82
It is here we come face to face with the real difficulties of the problem
These additional houses cannot be provided within the Borough. Most
of the overcrowding in the Borough is found to be due to poverty as well as
to the necessity of people to live near their work.
In the examination of the returns for slum areas, the percentage of
overcrowding is found to be in some cases as high as 50%, whilst in the case
of a large estate containing no slums, out of 1,560 houses containing 2,436
families, the percentage of overcrowding is 4.9%.
Section 12 of the Housing Act, 1935, defines alternative accommodation
as follows:—"(b) The Local Authority must certify the house to be suitable
to the needs of the occupier and his family as respects security of tenure and
proximity to place of work and otherwise and to be suitable in relation to his
means."
The position therefore appears to be as follows :—
The required building sites are not available in Stepney and, even if they
were, it is doubtful whether, owing to the cost of some of the sites it would be
possible to provide accommodation for a large number of families at a rent
within their means. To expect the majority of them to remove some distance
away and to incur additional expenses in travelling is doomed to failure.
Before any really effective work of slum clearance and of housing to abate
overcrowding can be carried out, a substantially large area within easy reach
of Stepney must be found for rehousing, otherwise the progress must necessarily
be slow. The problem is a vast one and the Borough Council are doing their
best to deal with a difficult situation. We can only hope that the County
Council and the Government with their vast resources will use every
endeavour to deal with the problem in no uncertain manner.
One cannot even guess what the future has in store for us. London has
grown to its present dimensions during the past century as a result of the
industrial revolution known as the Steam Age. We are now on the threshold
of the electrical age and it may be that industry will move out into the open
country where it would be possible to build new composite towns on garden
city lines in which people could live and work in healthy surroundings.
Has this process of disintegration already set in ?
The following figures may be of interest in this connection as regards the
population of Stepney :—