View report page

27
It is my duty once more to point out that the staff of Sanitary
Inspectors is inadequate.
It must be placed on record that twice during 1920, recommendations
urging the appointment of a District Sanitary
Inspector to fill the existing vacancy, were sent forward by the
Health Committee to the Council, but were defeated. In October,
1925 I again reported on the inadequacy of the staff to carry on.
During the last five years, the Department has been definitely
understaffed, and it has been quite impossible to deal with anything
except complaints. District inspection has been quite out of th.;
question. The extra work necessitated by the Public Health
(Meat) Regulations, 1924, made matters worse.
The problem of dealing with property at present is extremely
difficult, the Rent Restrictions Act allowing only a 40 per cent, increase
in the rent to cover the cost of repairs, which is in manv
cases totally inadequate. As things are now, many houses are
being crowded with two, three or more families. Sometimes
these houses have been of the better class more commodious houses,
and in the ordinary way the 40 per cent, would have been
comparatively just. Where these are sublet, often at an exhorbitant
profit to more families, the wear and tear on the landlord's property
is not in arithmetical progression, and he is in no way recompensed
by the limited increase in the rent which he is allowed to charge.
His tenant profiteers unblushingly and the landlord has to bear th"1
burden, and has no remedy whatever unless legal overcrowding
occurs. In nearly every case there is no legal overcrowding, but
as pointed out elsewhere considerable moral overcrowding. At
the same time there are landlords who are hard put to it, and
the tenants have a great difficulty in getting anything
done. It is very difficult at times to hold the scales justly between
the tenant who has certain rights, and a harrassed landlord who is
in certain cases deprived of his rights by statute.