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37
Allocation of New Houses.
When new housing units first became available, the Council decided
to allocate them on a points system, the points being allotted for a
variety of reasons. Three groups of persons remained outside the
scheme whose applications were dealt with independently because their
claims for rehousing rested essentially on health grounds. Of these
three groups, the overcrowded family was later brought into the points
scheme by additional points being given because of the overcrowding.
This left two groups outside the scheme. One was the family living in
the condemned house. This family was helped by the Public Health
Committee making an appropriate recommendation to the Housing
Committee. The other group was the family with a member suffering
from tuberculosis. To meet the needs of those in this group, one-sixth
of the housing accommodation which became available was allotted to
them.
There is not very much land available for use as housing sites left
in this district so there is a limit, probably to be reached in a few years,
to the number of houses the Council will be able to build and to have
available to meet the needs of those who apply for them. To obtain a
picture of the various demands which will or might be made on what
houses become available, the Housing Management Sub-Committee
asked the Public Health Committee to give an indication of (1) the
number of new houses which the Medical Officer of Health anticipates
having to report for action under Section 11 of the Housing Act, 1936 ;
(2) the number of tubercular families to be rehoused ; and (3) the number
of overcrowded families requiring to be rehoused.
The following is a copy of the report presented :—
A. Families in Condemned Houses.
1. Section 11 reads : " Where a Local Authority upon consideration of
an official representation or a report from any of their officers or other information
in their possession are satisfied that any house is unfit for human
habitation and is not capable at a reasonable expense of being rendered fit
they shall ..."
According to Section 188 (4) in determining whether a house is fit for
human habitation regard shall be had to the extent, if any, to which by
reason of disrepair or sanitary defects the house falls short of the provision
of any bye-laws in operation in the district.
2. There is no one standard of the unfitness of a house for human
habitation. It varies from place to place and changes in the one place from
time to time. There are a number of reasons for this. One is that the
standard is determined partly by the general standard in the district. Then,
too, in considering whether a house shall be represented with a view to
demolition not only is the unfitness considered but whether the house can be
repaired at a reasonable expense. The assessment of reasonableness depends
not only on the cost of the work that needs to be done, a variable factor,
but also on the value of the house when this work is completed. To-day it is
worth while keeping in use houses which cannot be considered really fit for
human habitation ; some of these houses were, in fact, considered for demolition
before the recent war.