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2
It is probably quite correct that only a few persons have migrated
into this Area during 1924 owing to the acute shortgage of housing
accommodation experienced by those already living in the District.
During 1924 there were 96 houses erected by private enterprise
and 16 by your Council as compared with 15 and 309 in 1922 and
70 and 26 in 1923, or a total of 532 since the census enumeration.
Approximately 600 more houses are required to meet the needs
of our people, in other words to produce the same ratio of houses
to population as existed before the War.
The anomaly of the situation is that there are at all times a
considerable number of vacant houses, and at the same time a,
greater number of parents with two, three or more children forced
to live in one room.
With the best intentions in the world on the part of such people
the children have no real opportunity to grow into decent healthy
citizens.
The money spent on Child Welfare and the School Medical
Services is no compensatory balance for this drawback and cannot
make good what is primarily lost to the children.
The home conditions of many of our people are, to put it mildly,
inimical to decency and health, and if not quickly remedied must
become a danger to family life and the State.
The birth, death and infantile mortality rates given in the
Tables following are based on the figures given by the RegistrarGeneral.
The number of births and deaths exceed those coming
to my knowledge during the year and account for some apparent
discrepancies.
The Birth-rate for 1924 was 17.4 per 1,000 for the year, compared
with 19-4 in 1923, 19-6 in 1922 and 21-7 in 1921.
With the exception of the years 1917, 1918 and 1919, it is the
lowest recorded and lower than that of the Country as a whole, or
of those of the Great and Smaller Towns of the Registrar-General's
Tables.
The total births registered within the Area was 2,138. Of
these, 34 were excluded, being children of parents domiciled elsewhere,
making the nett number 2,104.
The Registrar-General gives in his four quarterly summaries
the births as 2,134, and in March, 1925, having made the necessary
corrections, the number given was 2,291.