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OVERCROWDING.
With the completion of the first group of post-war
council houses, and the removal thereto of those families
who were known to be living in the worst condit ions, serious
thought was once more given to the whole problem of
overcrowding.
This subject had of necessity during the war years been
almost ignored. Movements of people had been so continuous,
most families had been unsettled in greater or lesser degree
by the war, houses had been destroyed, and statistics were
hopelessly out of date. It was known that the population
was some 10,000 up on the 1939 figures, and accommodation
was believed to be greatly overtaxed. There was moreover
a waiting-list for council houses of over 2,500, and the
problem presented some interesting and speculative features.
I therefore decided that the time had come when attention
should again be paid to the number of occupants of premises,
and that cases of overcrowding coming to the notice of the
Department should be recorded so that in due time a fairly
clear picture of the true position might be available.
Unfortunately, the time which could be devoted to this
subject during the year under review was insufficient to elicit
enough information for reliable conclusions to be drawn.
A check was made at 157 houses from which sub-tenants
had been rehoused by the Council to see if there was any
tendency for such accommodation to be re-let and perhaps
overcrowded. This revealed that in 81 houses the remaining
occupants had "spread out" and utilised the vacated rooms
in 74 houses re-letting had taken place without causing
overcrowding, in 1 case the rooms were not again being used
for habitation, whilst in only 1 case had re-letting taken
place so as to cause overcrowding and this proved to be only
a temporary arrangement which soon ceased.
Investigations in other directions suggested that new
cases of overcrowding were occurring by the influx of families
from outside the district. This caused me some concern and
I made a special report to the Council, pointing out the
difficulties that were likely to arise if families were permitted
to come into the district and cause new overcrowding to any
degree.
I suggested to the Council that the time had come for
them to indicate that they were no longer prepared to condone
newly-created overcrowding unless there were very exceptional
circumstances.
The Council supported me in this view and authorised me
to take informal action to deal with any such cases, and to
report them to the Council where I deemed it necessary.
It is interesting to note that at the end of 1948 the
National Registration Office population figure was 60,635
whilst the approximate number of "habitations" (houses,flats,
etc,) was 17,000. This gives an average of 3.56 persons
per habitation, but of course, to what extent distribution
is uneven is not known and wrong inferences can easily be
drawn.
As already indicated the data so far available is inadequate
21.