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Housing.
Housing conditions are improving as a result of the policy of the Council, which is to re-house
those people whose houses have been closed as unfit, or found to be overcrowded. Up to the end
of the year the Council have built in all 903 houses for letting purposes.
At the same time, progress has been made with building houses for sale. The total number
purchased during the year under the Small Dwellings Acquisition Act was 44, and the total amount
of loans under the Small Dwellings Acquisition Act up to the end of 1932 was £3,023,149.
Despite a slight easing of the problem, there is still great difficulty with regard to accommodation
in the case of a family with small children.
Last year I drew attention to the tragedy of Housing, conditions and rent and its effect on
Nutrition. Again, and in more emphatic manner, I urge the importance of the problem and its
solution.
If it be true that as Queen Mary said "Calais" would be found written on her heart after death,
so for many a Medical Officer of Health "Housing" will be found deeply graven.
The reiterated appeals of those decent folk living under conditions that make life intolerable,
that mean for the children a perpetual atmosphere of "D'ont," and for the harassed mother in the
one room no freedom even to talk after the children are asleep, and for the parents that absence of
privacy which makes things unbearable, coupled with the knowledge that it is not in one's power to
help, fill one's days with a sense of helplessness which is a constant fret. In addition there is the
knowledge that there are tenants earning up to £500 a year and the humilating knowledge that we
have aimed too high and left stranded so many of those who, from the health point of view, and particularly
that of the rising generation, are most in want of housing accommodation suitable to their
needs.
One is haunted by the pallid faces of some of the children and mothers living a life, " crimped,
cabined and confined," and nutritionally below the needs of health. True there is that constant
residuum of unhelpables that I believe the Socialists admit at 12% comprised largely of the subnormalsthe
dull and backwards at school, who leave to join the army of sluts that transform the model house
into a monument of inefficiency. These can only be classed as unhelpable. It isn't drink in most
cases, it is want of " Grey Matter." But beyond these are many of those mothers whose strivings
and whose patience compel one's whole hearced admiration and sympathy. We see so often that
sick heart, made sick by hope deferred by the Housing Officer's tale of the waiting numbers, now in this
area about 1,350. True a few of these are trying to get a Council House by deliberately getting into
financial arrears by overhousing, hoping that their financial embarrassment will be their foremost claim to
consideration for a Council House.
Often the rents of the new houses have been beyond the purses of these humble folk, in many
cases almost half their income going to pay for the roof over their heads, what time their bellies are
bereft of the four or five shillings difference in the rent that their newer house entails.
Nor is this the whole tale. For the families that are rehoused from one or two rooms, their
rehousing means that the house has to be furnished. This means from l/6d. up to 5/- a week on the
hire purchase system, and still less money available for nutritional needs.
Housing Estates built by private enterprise still keep going up, and the houses find purchasers
through building societies. But what of the future of these houses? One large estate, as nice an
estate one could wish to see, started off with single owner occupiers with small initial payments and
heavy rates of repayment. It is abundantly evident, that for an ever increasing number of the
occupiers, the payments are beyond their capacity to maintain, even if in work. Now in house after
house either the upper half is let as a separate flat or there are one or two lodgers. In one case
three separate families were occupying one of these small modern houses with three bedrooms,
and there was still the small bedroom used, only as a lumber room. Referring to this area, a
large itinerant fishmonger who had combed the estate thoroughly, remarked to me that he thought
there were only thirty-three customers worth catering for ! What is and has been wrong throughout
the County ? Mainly the fact that the persons who know most of the real needs and facts,
viz., the Medical Officers of Health, have been left out of the deliberations on housing and rehousing.
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