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149
THE COUNTY COUNCIL ON THE HOUSING OF
THE LABOURING CLASSES.
The valuable report of the Housing of the Working
Classes Committee (March 1890), in which they recommended
the provision of Municipal Lodging-houses, furnishes other indications
of the lines on which the Council, through the Committee,
will attempt the solution of the vexed question of the
Housing of the Working Classes, especially those in the lowergrades.
The comprehensiveness of the report may be inferred
from the title headings of its several parts, viz.:—
1. As to the means available for securing the sanitary condition
of existing dwellings.
2. As to the provision of further and better accommodation
for the working classes in the Metropolis, considered with
reference to—
(a) The re-housing of persons displaced by clearances or improvements.
(&) The further provision of accommodation to meet the increase of the
population.
(c) The provision of "clean, healthy homes for people poorer than those
who at present avail themselves of the existing artizans' dwellings,"
referred to under the heads—
(i.) Unfurnished tenements and small cottage tenements,
(ii.) Furnished tenements ; and
(iii.) Common lodging-houses.
It is impossible to give a just idea of the full scope of the
report in a brief abstract, but it may be stated that the Committee,
with regard to (1), recognize the impossibility of relieving,
to more than a very limited extent, the present unsatisfactory
condition of things, by the provision of fresh accommodation for
the working classes, in the form of model dwellings, whether
undertaken by philanthropists or public bodies: the bulk of the
people must live in existing houses and be dependent on others