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55
HOUSING.
One of the most acute and pressing problems, certainly as regards
health, with which the Council is faced, is the shortage of houses
which can be let at rentals within the means of the lowest paid workers.
The Housing problem, so far as Central London and its immediate
surroundings are concerned, is entirely different from that in any other
part of the country, and will have to be dealt with in an entirely
different manner.
The sooner the idea of judging the overcrowding or health of an
area by the number of persons per acre is forgotten, the better, as
experience has proved it is utterly fallacious, and what really matters
is the number of persons per room.
It is agreed from everyone's point of view that the ideal accommodation
is a small self-contained house with garden; but this cannot
be done in London owing to lack of space and the enormous land values.
Certainly those persons who can afford to live a little way out from
their work and pay the travelling expenses ought to do so, so as to
make more room for the less fortunate.
This method of re-housing persons away from Central London
has been the policy of the L.C.C. for several years past, but so far
as this Borough is concerned, the majority of those that can afford
to live away, and those whose work does not demand their living in
Central London, have been moved, and we are now left with a large
number who earn anything from 30/- to £3 10s. per week,
many with large families and therefore unable to pay high
rents, yet requiring the greatest accommodation; around this central
factor revolve the problems of re-housing yet to be solved, namely,
shortage, expensive sites and cost of building. Until a solution is
found the inevitable must happen, viz., sub-letting of already well filled
houses, whereby the poorer citizens become huddled together, not only
in an unhealthy, but also in a disgraceful, immoral and degrading
manner.
The evils arising from such conditions are already so well known
that it is unnecessary to describe them.
Some little idea of the overcrowding in this Borough can be
obtained from a digest of the census figures, as outlined in an earlier
part of this report; from these figures it will be seen that there are at
least between 2,000 and 3,000 serious cases of overcrowding.