Working-class housing

“ Obviously, house-property in London will fall in rental value, and fall enormously. Slum property will sink to zero, and the whole working population will move into houses of a class quite above those which they can now afford to occupy. Families which are now compelled to huddle together in one room will be able to rent five or six, and thus will the housing problem temporarily solve itself by the simple process of a diminution in the numbers of the tenants. ”

“ Perhaps the worst feature of working-class life at this time was the scandalous state of housing. The manufacturing towns had grown up rapidly to meet a sudden demand. The progress of enclosing, the decay of home industry, and the call of capital for labour in towns had caused a considerable displacement of population. ”

“ The tendency to rise is attributable to increased cost of labour, due to higher wages and less work, increased cost of materials and higher rates. Weekly working-class rents generally include rates which are paid by the landlord. Housing reform has contributed to the rise, both directly and through the rates, on which it has thrown a heavy burden in various ways. When slums are cleared away and replaced by superior dwellings the new rents are generally higher than the old and this fact has proved a great difficulty. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As one drops down the economic scale the present failure to properly house the wage-earner becomes more striking. For the family of the semi-skilled worker, for the factory worker's family whose income is hardly larger than average factory wage, for the lower-paid ranks of the "white collar" worker and of the government employee, decent housing in new construction is scarcely to be had to-day anywhere. And as for the housing problem of the unskilled worker, married and with a normalsized family, it may be a long time indeed before he can be provided for. ”

“ It was felt that capital, no less than labor, would deplore any reduction in the standard of living of the workers in industry, and the individuals interested in the Bayonne experiment were ready to lend a hand in placing the production of wage-earners' houses on a sounder business basis.
That the particular section of the real estate market which produces wage-earners' housing is careless of the social interest, and that it operates inefficiently, with heavy economic waste in many industrial centres of the country—this is a truth well known to housing experts. ”

“ On behalf of a number of well-known capitalists, who had been identified with the cause of tenement house reform for years, Robert Fulton Cutting, the president of the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor, offered to build homes for the working people that should be worthy of the name, on a large scale. A company was formed, and chose for its president Dr. Elgin R. L. Gould, author of the government report on [Pg 83] the Housing of the Working People, the standard work on the subject. A million dollars were raised by public subscription, and operations were begun at once. ”

“ Undoubtedly, however, a large number of bona fide working men, regular workers, or casual workers, would still be unable to afford a sanitary and satisfactory house. It is impossible really to solve the housing problem till this condition of things has been altered, and a wide extension of the policy of the Trade Boards Act, placing an increasing number of trades under it, and fixing a minimum wage for them, is essential to true housing reform. ”

“ The main purpose in the erection and operation of such a building should be to demonstrate that it is possible to provide satisfactory living accommodations for working men at a reasonable rental and as a business proposition that will net five to six per cent." It would be difficult to find, in a few words, a clearer statement of the policy of housing in its social, architectural and financial relationships. ”

“ The bearing on housing policy of the excessive cost of the row house, as compared with the garden apartment, is not clearly enough appreciated. Under present conditions, when even the garden apartment is beyond the means of the lowerpaid workers, the insistence of many housing experts that the row house is the only solution for wage-earner's housing, seems somewhat arbitrary. ”

“ In deciding the housing policy for a specific locality or for a single housing enterprise in respect to rentals and to the number of rooms to be provided, there should be no great difficulty in steering between the variations in different wage groups and in individual families, which seem to conflict. The fact is, that for some time to come, it will be possible to care for the needs of only the more prosperous wage-earners. In almost any industrial district, new low-priced housing of the right kind will not go begging for occupants. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But now we are confronted with the fact that there is a great shortage even of such houses as I have described. Recent investigations in a great number of towns, show pretty clearly that in about half the towns of England there are many working men who cannot get accommodation suited to their needs. Either they must go into houses that are much too large, and take lodgers to help to pay the rent, or they must crowd into houses that are unsatisfactory or much too small, not because they are unable or unwilling to pay for better ones, but because there are none to be had. ”

“ The claim has been made, especially in real estate circles, that, if the wage-earner would be willing to return to the home of his forefathers, where he enjoyed plenty of space, but had less elaborate plumbing, heating and electric equipment and appliances—what are popularly known as "modern conveniences"—he could once again be economically housed. Some critics cite the fact that even to-day most American farm houses lack mechanical improvements. In other words (it is claimed) what makes wage-earners' housing expensive is the cost of luxuries, not of necessities. ”

“ And the model dwellings referred to usually succeed in housing not the class which must live near their work but the class who could well go out beyond the suburbs. Thus the effect of tinkering in the centre is often but to set free for the poorest of the poor the tenements deserted by the better class who pass to the new dwellings. ”

“ In theory, low and moderate income families should benefit even from construction of new housing which they themselves cannot afford because such housing creates vacancies which ‘filter down.’ In reality, however, most of these vacancies are absorbed by the enormous lag between population growth and new housing construction. Sagalyn & Sternlieb, supra at 42. The housing which does ‘filter down’ to persons with low or moderate incomes is often badly dilapidated and in deteriorating neighborhoods. ”

“ It is necessary to understand the tangle of economic and human factors which has caused the existing situation in industrial housing. In dissecting the corpse of the housing industry, we soon find, as already stated, that high prices was the disease which killed the patient. Everything that enters into the cost of a home—land, site utilities, building construction, finance, taxes, municipal assessments, household furnishings, maintenance, operation of the completed home—has enormously increased in price. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The chief fault of company housing was, that it superposed the landlord-tenant strife on the capital-labor antagonism, and thus created a combination which has been responsible for some of the most unsavory episodes in American industrial history. ”

“ During the last quarter of a century efforts have been made by several philanthropic societies, public companies, and private individuals to lessen the evils of overcrowding and to improve the dwellings of the labouring class. Much good has, no doubt, been done by these means, and the rents of working-men's houses would but for these efforts have risen much higher even than they have done. But these efforts do not reach the real evil. In very few cases have the building companies been able to purchase and remove the houses unfit for human habitation. ”

“ The Immigration Commission found not only that in some cases the stock was inferior and the prices high, but that there was a sense of compulsion that made it almost impossible to adjust income and needs.
It is hardly necessary to point out that the supply of housing accommodations by the employer has the same influence as the supply of food and clothing. The power as employer may be, and often is, exerted to fix the conditions under which the family life goes on; and the tenant is deprived of the experience of selecting, of choosing, of balancing what one gives with what one gets. ”

“ The increasing complexity of the times and the steady rise in prices now bear very heavily on housing, and, in cities where industrial expansion takes place, breakdowns in housing production are occurring. It is not so much that new houses for the wage-earners are not built, but that such houses as are built are too expensive and of a low standard. Bayonne furnished one of these examples of housing breakdown. ”

“ It is disastrous to the nation as a whole, that many of its workers should be unable to pay for proper accommodation, nor can it ultimately benefit the employer. We must not only cheapen housing and decasualise labour, but we must raise wages, and then we can definitely compel the municipalities to carry out the law which says "Every house in this locality shall be reasonably fit for habitation." ”

“ When that occurs, it should be possible to house the American wage-earner better than ever before. The success of the Bayonne experiment renews the hope of providing good housing for the less prosperous families of the population. Then, of our two pictures, the one of slums and the other of ideal garden homes, only the ideal garden homes will remain. ”

“ Looking at the other side of the picture—that of the lower paid workers—outside the factory classification are the clerical workers, the "white collar class," the government employees, such as policemen, postmen, firemen, street-cleaners, who are in many cases less well-paid than the semi-skilled, or even the unskilled.
Equally important is the fact of considerable variation in income between members of each wage group. After all, the family is the unit in housing, financially or otherwise, and the income of the family may be larger than the wages of the head. ”

“ This achievement brings within the reach of the higher-paid wage-earner an ideal home of the American standard of living. By thus demonstrating that the better-paid wage-earner can be ideally housed, the ultimate goal in housing, namely, the lower-paid ranks of the population—is brought nearer realization. ”

“ Up to 4,000 leva can be borrowed for this purpose in urban areas and up to 3,000 leva in rural areas. This, however, covers less than one-half of the cost of a two-room apartment.
Although the increasing reliance on tenant-financed housing is helping to reduce the overall housing shortage, it has meant that most new housing units are built for the higher income groups. Cooperative apartments and private houses require a substantial initial investment and the assumption of a mortgage, which are beyond the means of most blue-collar and low-income white-collar workers. ”

“ Q. We have heard this question from the standpoint of Chicago, New York and Philadelphia, but the clientele of this association, as I understand it, covers the entire country, and I should like to ask Mr. De Forest whether it is not true that the investigation made by the Tenement House Commission of New York disclosed the fact that in virtually every manufacturing city of the country there is to-day distinctly a housing problem for the poor and that definite constructive work needs to be done to remedy the evils. ”

“ The mill demands strong, cheap labor, but concerns itself little whether that labor is provided with living [Pg 922] conditions that will maintain its efficiency or secure the efficiency of the next generation. The housing situation is in the hands of men actuated only by a greed of profit. The community, on the other hand though realizing the situation, does not take its responsibility for the aliens in its midst with sufficient seriousness to attempt to limit the power of these landlords. ”

“ Therefore we must call together the resources of industry and labor, to start building 300,000 housing units for low- and middle-income families next year--that is three times more than this year. We must make it possible for thousands of families to become homeowners, not rent-payers.
I propose, for the consideration of this Congress, a 10-year campaign to build 6 million new housing units for low and middle-income families. Six million units in the next 10 years. We have built 530,000 the last 10 years. ”