View report page

98
Please ascertain name and address of owner:—
(Signed)
Sanitary Inspector.
Issued Returned
Date warning letter sent
Statement reference number
Many families are living under overcrowded conditions because of the difficulties
of existence generally, and it is not so much with them a question of overcrowding
as of managing to exist, and they go where they can get the cheapest accommodation.
Any owner or occupier letting a dwelling of inadequate size to such a family commits
an offence, but it may not be a wilful offence and, in the event of the Council taking
legal proceedings against him, it is probable that he would satisfy the Court by
stating that he had taken steps to get rid of his tenant. Moreover, erroneous information
given to him by a prospective tenant, as in a recent case taken to Court,
may be sufficient in itself to satisfy the Court. In one case which has come to notice
since the close of the year under review a dwelling large enough to accommodate
five persons was let to a family of this size, but subsequently six more children were
brought in from another address. In another case a family occupying a dwelling of
sufficient size removed after the husband had entered a sanatorium to a smaller
dwelling, the rent of which was more suitable to their means. This smaller dwelling
was not overcrowded when occupied only by the wife and children, but when the
husband returned from sanatorium the offence of overcrowding after the "appointed
day" was committed.
If overcrowding is to be considered only from the point of view of persons who
were living in overcrowded dwellings before the ' 'appointed day,'' and accommodation
is not to be offered to persons who have become overcrowded since the "appointed
day,'' it necessarily follows that a number of families are to be regarded as permanently
outside the Council's scheme for the relief of overcrowding, and that by no fault of
their own, unless there are to be compassionate grounds. In other words, the overcrowding
scheme will lead to a worsening, not betterment, of the condition of a number
of families who are among the most helpless in the Borough.
In view of the difficulties now being experienced by many applicants in obtaining
re-housing accommodation, either in private or municipal dwellings, the procedure
of clarifying the situation by gradually enforcing the insertion of the "permitted
number'' in rent books by the issue of warning letters, and restricting formal notice
and legal proceedings as regards overcrowding to cases where families have the
possibility of obtaining other accommodation of a suitable nature, will cause less
hardship than a policy of proceeding against numerous landlords and agents who,
unlike tenants with no resources, have an easy way out of their difficulties, particularly
in view of the fact that neither the Borough Council nor the County Council has yet
succeeded in providing sufficient accommodation to meet requirements.
HOUSING STATISTICS
The housing conditions of the Borough are reported upon in
the following form in accordance with the directions of the Ministry
of Health:—