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93
Housing.
During the year 1922, the shortage of housing accommodation
in Battersea was still one of the most pressing problems of the
Council. Very many cases of hardship and of serious overcrowding
resulting from the lack of adequate housing accommodation to
meet the needs of the Borough, have been brought to notice through
the active and systematic surveys of the district, which the Housing
Committee have caused to be made. The large numbers of applications
registered, amounting to 2,000 during the last few years,
for housing accommodation on the Council's Housing Estates,
emphasise still more eloquently the seriousness of the situation.
The Council have only been able to make provision for a small
percentage of these applicants, the resources at their disposal for
the provision of houses for the working-classes being limited owing
to the lack of further available building sites within the Borough.
Unfortunately, there seems to be no immediate prospect that the
congestion and, even in certain areas of the Borough, the serious
overcrowding, will be relieved by the provision of housing accommodation
outside the Borough. The continuance of such unsatisfactory
housing conditions as are now known to prevail in
Battersea, in some of the lower Wards, constitutes a danger to the
public health, and from the social and the moral standpoints,
the situation is still further to be deplored. During the past 4 years,
the Council through the Housing Committee have done what they
could to provide additional housing accommodation in the Borough,
and during 1922, 56 tenements on the Latchmere site and at Savona
Street were completed and were occupied by 56 families consisting
of 303 persons.
Overcrowding.
The extent to which overcrowding exists in the Borough is
difficult to estimate with accuracy. There is no doubt, however,
that in some of the lower Wards of the Borough there is considerable
congestion, and in some areas of these Wards, serious overcrowding
exists. In this connection the report of the Registrar-General on
the recent census returns in relation to the Borough of Battersea
is of interest.
The population of the Borough as estimated by the Registrar
General is 169,200.
The total number of structurally separate occupied dwellings
in the Borough is 27,191, containing 157,323 occupied rooms with
an average of 0.96 rooms per person.
The buildings are classified into five different groups, as
follows:—
I. Undivided private houses 21,211
II. Structurally divided houses 724
III, Flats, tenements, &c. 3,518