Housing

“ It, and it alone provides, or if one must be cautious, appears to provide the way to turn an old dream of mine and of many other people into a reality. My connection with the problem of housing, and especially of rural housing, i.e. cottage housing, now nearly a quarter of a century old, has been on the side of cheap material. Rightly or wrongly (I know that many great experts in building matters think quite wrongly) , I have had the simplicity to believe that if you are to get cheap housing you must get it by the use of cheap material. It has always seemed to me that there is no other way. ”

“ Housing has always been intimately related to the real estate exploitation of a continent. This exploitation has made housing a small-scale business, individualistic, very loosely organized and highly speculative. Its roots reach down to pioneer economics, back to the days when each householder built his home in a clearing, cutting down the trees of the forest for building materials. As towns and cities developed, the primitive method of the frontier soon gave place to a system of division of functions and of responsibilities. ”

“ The contrast of slums
To draw such an ideal picture seems an odd way of beginning a discussion of economics. Nevertheless, the subject of housing economics is so intricate and so generally misunderstood that it easily loses point unless it is illustrated in a clear picture which we may keep before our eyes, revealing the vision of the future, when intelligence, organization and imagination are at last brought widespread into housing. ”

“ Economics, therefore, is fundamental in industrial housing. Housing economics is an extremely complex subject, and is involved deeply in the technique of housing architecture. It is generally misunderstood, perhaps because the housing industry is divided into many parts—into finance, real estate, city planning, architecture, contracting, house furnishings, real estate management and household operation—so that housing is usually looked upon from the point of view of one or two of these many, often conflicting, interests, and rarely is it considered as a whole. ”

“ What are the possible ways out of the dilemma in housing? The general problem of land control. In the appendixes two prize essays on the solution of the housing problem are reprinted. The author is editor of the Journal of the American Institute of Architects.
“The style in which the book is written should make this book one of the most popular works on housing. Like all books devoted to the presentation and emphasis of one fundamental idea the work suffers from lack of perspective in so far as its use as a work upon which a thoroughly constructive housing program could be built.” ”

“ It is surely not a mere coincidence that at the present time, not only in England but in other countries, a movement is in progress side by side with that of housing reform which is of great significance—the revival in domestic architecture. ”

“ In addition, however, to these two obvious elements in satisfactory housing accommodation, we are rapidly coming to recognise a third. If one walks through an ordinary town to-day, and particularly if one walks through London, it is obvious at once that the arrangement and external form of the houses leaves much to be desired. One sees, for instance, a great number of buildings frequently huddled together, stretching in long rows of dismal sameness, with narrow streets and no green spaces. ”

“ Mass housing, no matter what form it took, whether the forty-eight tall slabs of the Cerro Piloto or the forty-eight hundred, more or less, semi-detached two-storey dwellings of an English housing estate, belongs increasingly to the world of bureaucratized architecture. The house, on the other hand, conceived as an individualized entity, remained almost as much a specialized and exceptional product as the church; yet the changes first made in individual houses gradually affected all housing standards. ”

“ Finally comes the very vexed question of housing, municipal and private, that has grown so acute since the War. In this movement the motorist has played a prominent part, for he has helped to extend the “Housing Problem,” from its obvious location on the fringes of our towns, away to the remoter parts of the country. From Kent to Hampshire the bungalows line our southern cliffs. Housing needs may be divided into three groups: those of the townsman, the [53] rustic, and the week-ender. ”

“ The whole presents to the eye a vast area of dreary meanness and monotony. Thus the best feature of English national housing turns to its apparent disadvantage and the impression is gained by superficial observers that the bulk of our working-class populations lives in “slums.” ”

“ But the greatest merit of the garden apartment is, that it offers the wage-earner an ideal home. Economy and efficiency, essential as they are in industrial housing, will not alone suffice unless the housing is humanly attractive and personal, for these are the qualities which create the ideal home. Some understanding of the architecture of the garden apartment is therefore desirable. ”

“ During the time that housing costs were rising, architects have given their best efforts to improve housing architecture and they have finally succeeded in perfecting a home for the American wage-earner which in all respects measures up to his standard of living, the highest in the world. ”

“ Reform which aims at raising the lowest classes of tenants by improving their dwellings defeats itself when it drives them away.
Rural Housing.—Little has hitherto been said about rural housing. It is of less importance than urban housing because it concerns a much smaller proportion of the population, and because in rural life the influence of inferior housing on health is offset by other conditions ”

“ The conditions of housing are worse in towns than in country districts, higher rents and less ground space implying that each family on an average lives in fewer and more crowded rooms than in rural districts. ”

“ New times bring new problems and housing is one of these. In the picture of industrial expansion, as it exists in the minds of most people, housing does not figure prominently. The need of the wage-earner for a home is assumed to care for itself in the market furnished by the local real estate interests. ”

“ In the present awakening of the public mind to the importance of the housing question, and the want of substantial, comfortable, as well as comely dwellings for the people, especially in the country districts, much attention has been directed to cottage building, and a practical effort is being made by the Garden City Association to solve the question in the competitive exhibition in cottage design and building they recently organized. ”

“ Housing: Air and sunshine are the first requisites of healthy life. The government recognizes a certain responsibility in insuring these necessities, and prescribes by law regulations for the construction and inspection of living accommodations. Many families [Pg 176] cannot choose their homes, but are obliged to live in the kind of buildings that are to be found near their work. Inside rooms without windows, rooms into which a ray of sunshine has never penetrated, are common in every city in the State. ”

“ Particularly significant is that part of it which, in proposing definite measures of relief, at the same time lays down the fundamental principles of industrial housing. First, the report goes to the root of the whole complicated subject by emphasizing the essentials of durable construction, and of daylight, ventilation, garden and recreation space in the architectural design. To quote the report: "We believe that the only plan by which apartments can be provided will be an apartment house or a modified form of tenement house containing not more than fifty apartments. ”

“ Co-operative Building.—Municipal and philanthropic housing by no means exhaust the efforts that have been made to provide working-class dwellings outside the ordinary building market. Their special function has been to substitute better dwellings for pre-existing bad ones, which is the most costly and difficult, as well as the most urgent, part of the problem in old towns. But in the provision of new dwellings alone they have been far surpassed by organized self-help in different forms. ”

“ HOUSING PROBLEM
"6. Housing facilities developed acute shortage through curtailment of building during the war and, due to curtailment, for many months following the armistice, of the production of building material and of building construction, housing is still far below normal. Rents continue to rise.
PROVISION OF NEW CAPITAL
"7. ”

“ The housing and the sanitary conditions in many of these villages are still of the most repulsive character. The land often belongs to one or two owners who decline either to part with plots of it for building cottages or to build themselves. ”

“ We shall encourage low ­cost housing designs and the more effective utiliza­tion of local materials for housing construction to reach as many beneficiaries as possible-a project that has been started by the Ministry of Human Settlements. ”

“ Sympathy, guidance and instruction by Health visitors and others may often enable them, without any additional expense, greatly to improve their lot. A like statement is true in a pre-eminent degree of certain elements of satisfactory housing. ”

“ These housing regulations now provide, as a rule, that houses designed to accommodate more than two families shall not occupy more than two-thirds of the lots upon which they are built, the remaining space being left for light and air. They also require that such houses shall not be of highly inflammable construction, that they be provided with lighted hallways, that sanitary equipment be installed, and that no rooms be used for ordinary living purposes unless they have one or more windows. ”

“ The fundamental question as to the wisdom or otherwise of properly arranged subsidies upon the housing accommodation offered to the poor still remains to be faced. Ought housing accommodation to be treated as education and insurance are now treated, or ought it to be left, like food and clothing, without the support of any subsidy? ”

“ If he who makes two blades of grass grow where one grew before is a benefactor, then what is he who tears down a ramshackle tenement and rears in its place such a house as the Casa Ravello, where many families enjoy the privileges of privacy and individuality, or a group of houses such as those in the Richmond district, where the children have abundant play room and each occupant controls half his house, or a small home for one family of which so many examples are entered on the books of the Association in various localities and at varying prices, all within a modest range? ”

“ Next there is the highest division of working class houses—Class 3—built perhaps twenty or twenty-five, and sometimes even fewer, to the acre, with a parlour, a little hall or passage, a living room, a scullery behind that, and three bedrooms, with occasionally a bathroom. ”

“ We do not realise that one person in ten is living under what are technically known as "overcrowded conditions"—that is, with more than two persons to every room in the house. And these houses are crowded thirty, forty, and even fifty to the acre. ”

“ In any long railway journey we pass through town after town, and see these dismal rows without a vestige of greenery about them, only characterised by their meanness and by their deadly monotony. When such homes are overcrowded, and only have two bedrooms, it is impossible, or next to impossible, to live decently, especially when the family is grown up. ”

“ The houses round about—not Association property—have ruinous shacks at the rear that hold broken boxes and barrels, superannuated chairs and bedding and broken-down baby carriages. There is no clear space to sit under a shade-tree, or plant morning-glories, or put a sandpile. One longs to see the workmen who are paving the Octavia Hill courtyard below turn their attention to the whole vicinity. ”

“ That sanitary, durable and comfortable dwellings can be built for rental at less than $15.00 per month, and made to yield under proper management a return of 5 per cent. has been repeatedly demonstrated in this and other cities. To any interest that is willing to consider such investment with the further view of meeting a community need, we should offer our services. From our own actual experience in this field and our knowledge of similar undertakings elsewhere, our organization can, we believe, render valuable help in the planning and execution of such projects. ”

“ The fruit of Miss Dinwiddie’s long and conscientious labor with the Committee’s cooperation was a comprehensive legislative measure embodying the ten years’ experience of the Association and dealing with the adaptation to the purposes of three or more families of houses originally built for one. An earlier law, of 1895, made the building of tenement houses, as such, so costly that few since that time have been built for families of small incomes. Its present day application is almost wholly to the erection of high-class apartment houses. ”

“ This size proved sufficient to demonstrate the efficiency of large-scale planning, not only in respect to ideal architecture, but also as regards economy of production cost, which, as pointed out in previous pages, necessitates large-scale operation.
The houses provide homes for 149 families, generally in four, five and six-room apartments. Each apartment has a fully equipped bathroom, and the six-room apartments have, in addition, a shower-bathroom, as will be explained later. ”

“ Every apartment has cheerful, sunny rooms, with two or three exposures; the rooms are never more than two deep, the apartments extending through the building, giving thus to all rooms, cross-ventilation; and a large number of the bedrooms are corner rooms. Living rooms and dining rooms are separate from the bedrooms, and the kitchen is also isolated ”