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# Chapter V.
# HOUSING.
In recent years some evidence has been shown amongst the artizan class of the Colony of a quickening social consciousness and the resultant desire to avail themselves of improved housing accommodation wherever such is made available. The unskilled labouring classes, however, are still found densely packed in tenement houses deficient in light and air. This class of labour has to find its habitat as close as possible to the scene of its labour, with the result that the Western part of the City of Victoria, which houses the native business quarter and closely adjoins the portion of the harbour handling the traffic from the West River and Chinese Coast Ports, is seriously overcrowded.
2. These conditions are being slowly mitigated by the rebuilding of properties which from time to time are condemned for reasons of structural defects. This process of elimination is, however, too slow to create any appreciable improvement. The legislation now being contemplated, which calls for the provision of reasonable yard space, when made operative, will hasten the removal or reconstruction of much of the old property. This, whilst providing improved housing conditions, will no doubt mean increased cost of living to the labouring classes.
3. Hitherto, the hostility of the property-owning class to the introduction of legislation requiring additional open space and per se reducing the earning power of the property has been the chief obstacle in obtaining improved conditions. It can, however, be recorded that this spirit of obstruction is less evident today as a result of education, and of the example set by some of the better class of realty companies whose blocks of tenement houses compare not unfavourably in essential respects with modern European practice.
4. The housing of the Colony is all privately owned, and control is maintained by the operation of the Public Health and Buildings Ordinance, the provisions of which also mould the character of the housing. Generally the houses are built back to back in rows, separated by a scavenging lane six feet in width specified by the Ordinance. These houses vary in height from two to four storeys according to the width of the street on to which they front, whilst the average height per storey is twelve feet, a minimum being controlled by the Ordinance. The houses built prior to the 1903 Ordinance covering the greatest part of the native quarter are of depths varying from forty feet to eighty feet, with often less than 100 square feet of open space provided within the curtilage of the lot. After the passing of the Public Health and Buildings Ordinance No. 1 of 1903, the amount of open space per house to be allowed within the boundaries of each lot is governed,