SHOCKING HOUSING CONDITIONS

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 22, 20 October 1917, Page 7

SHOCKING HOUSING CONDITIONS

IN OVERCROWDED MELBOURNE. The Housing Commission, which has been collecting evidence, has reported vigorously in condemnation of the existing health laws in some of the Melbourne suburbs. The commission reports that there is appalling overcrowding and a lamentably lax observance of hygienic precautions.

A number of hotels, which have been closed under tho licensing laws, have been let and sublet, until they are deplorably over-occupied. It often happens that one room is rented to a whole family. The absence of sufficient housing Hccommodituon has promoted' excessive subdivision, together with the multiplication of small apartments, by installing partitions in order to increase boarding accommodation. In Fibroy a husband, his wife, and three children were living in one room.

In a South Melbourne house of three rooms three families were huddled.

Two families, totalling eight persons, were discovered in a three-roomed house ill Port Melbourne.

In fashionable St. Kilda a bedroom 10ft. by 10ft., and wil-h damp, walls, accommodated a man, his wife, and four children.

The commission recommends tke_ ideation, of a Central Health Commission, and ' advocates a number of immediate and searching reforms.