METHOD OF SURVEY

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 83, 8 April 1938, Page 6

METHOD OF SURVEY

MINIMUM STANDARDS

AIR SPACE AND FACILITIES

The survey, which was ordered under the Housing Survey Act of 1935 and the regulations laid down in 1936, was patterned upon the surveys made in Great Britain a year or two earlier, and the standards as to minimum requirements of floor space, kitchen, bathing and washing and sanitary equipment"were practically those*set out in the British, regulations.

The main minimum, requirements are these:—

Every dwelling unit (whether a dwelling or a flat or apartment) must ha.ye a kitchen or other living-room, a bedroom or bedrooms, bathroom, and lavatory.

Boarding-houses or lodging houses must have, in addition to the requirements for a dwelling unit, adequate dining- and living-room space, arid sanitary accommodation in a. fixed proportion.

A dwelling unit is considered overcrowded if two or more,, persons of opposite sex and over ten years of age (other than husband and wife) must sleep in the same bedroom. There is also a table as to the amount of floor and air space for bedrooms, typical minima being:—6o to 8Q square feet, one adult; 80 to 100 square feet, adult and child under ten; 100 to 120 square feet, two adults; 150 to 190 square feet, three adults. A,room of less than 45 square feet of floor space is considered unsatisfactory as a bedroom. Low ceilings are also unsatisfactory.

The analyses of the data gathered were taken out upon a number of bases, e.g., physical condition of aU buildings, condition c-f domestic equipment, separate conveniences (in dwellings, apartments, and lodging houses), size of family units, number of children living under satisfactory and unsatisfactory conditions, overcrowding of bedrooms, rents for houses and apartments, and so on. i ; * ■,

A staff of about twenty inspectors ■ and others worked on the survey proper for six months or more and the further analysis has occupied three months. The inspectors worked to a definite system and a vast amount of, accurate detailed information was obtained. The" inner city and suburban areas were surveyed on a house-to-house system, but in the outer suburbs "cross section" surveys were made, for. suburban conditions are generally satisfactory, except as regards flats and apartments., .'■•-., '" "■'