Read Ebook: Good housing that pays by Waldo Fullerton L Fullerton Leonard Sargent John Singer Illustrator

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es reach to the playground at the rear of the houses. The central courtyard is entered by a driveway that permits of the collection of ashes and garbage without littering the sidewalk in front of the houses.

An easy question is, why couldn't these houses have front verandahs on both stories? The equally easy answer is that such verandahs add to the first cost and to the subsequent rental. There are balconies at the rear.

Work was begun in the summer of 1915, and in December the houses were completed and occupied. The work was done under Mr. Feld's daily supervision, and done well, without a general contract. Thus a substantial saving was effected, and the construction is abreast of the standard set in work carried out on the usual plan.

In each case a tenant was ready for the house when it was ready for him. The rental is .50 per month for an apartment of two rooms and bath, with a pantry having wash-tubs and a range in one of the rooms. Each of the two families in an apartment house has a partitioned share of the cellar. An apartment of two rooms, kitchen and bath is to be had for .50. The rental is .50 for the one family houses, which give the tenant five rooms, with bath and furnace. There is at all times a waiting-list for these eminently delightful and desirable little homes close to a particularly busy center of diversified manufacturing enterprise.

At the end of the eleven months to November, 1916, the rent amounted to ,517.65 out of a possible ,676,--the difference being due to the fact that periods of occupancy did not precisely overlap. After deducting expenses and interest paid on mortgages the Model Homes Company was able to show a profit of ,873.19; of this sum it set aside 0 for a depreciation account; and it paid to the Association ,400, which was a seven per cent. return on the ,000 invested by the Association.

A rebate of one-half of one month's rent was made to tenants who had lived in an apartment or a house a year and done no careless damage requiring repairs. Trees were planted in the yard and before the houses, and the occupants have always evinced a lively interest in their little garden-plots. The nationality census is interesting. In the first year there were these families: Scotch, 3, German, 5, French, 2, Norwegian, 5, Swedish, 1, Italian, 1, American-born, 31 ,--a total of 48.

In 1914-15 the Association shared the gratitude of certain poor families which had no work in sight for the bread-winner, by arranging with the Emergency Aid Committee to supply the necessary materials and supervision if the Committee would provide the wages of laborers and mechanics engaged in repair work on the properties. Nine men began work on this basis in February, and fifty at one time were finally employed. The work was continued until July, when funds were no longer available. In all, eighty men benefited by the arrangement: seventeen painters, eight carpenters, fifty-five laborers. From the Emergency Aid Committee ,000 was received, and was disbursed for wages, tools, car-fare and incidental expenses. Two hundred houses were completely put in order and painted, yards were repaved, fences were rebuilt, grading was done, and a vacant area was prepared for gardening purposes. Moreover, men who knew nothing of plastering or cement work learned how to do it, and thus acquired a new accomplishment of market value. They put down floors, relaid walks, whitewashed cellars, and concreted walls where dampness had exuded. Some of these men who came as utterly green hands still remain in the employ of the Association.

In 1916 the Whittier Centre, with whose purposes the Association is wholly in sympathy, carried out a plan for improved housing facilities for the negro population. The Centre is organized for the study of this problem, and for practical measures devised as the outcome thereof. It formed the Whittier Centre Housing Company, with a capital of ,000, which took title to property at Dickinson and Opal Streets. The planning and construction of the first group of houses was put in the hands of the Association, and Mr. Feld supervised the building of seven two-family dwellings with apartments of three rooms and bath, at a rental of .00 and .50 a week. As an indication of the lively demand for such cleanly and attractive quarters, it should be noted that there were two hundred applications for the fourteen apartments available.

That this enterprise pays is shown by the fact that in midsummer of 1917 a dividend of 5 per cent. was paid.

As for houses for negro tenants owned by the Association, an interesting group will be found along Naudain Street between Seventh and Eighth, and in the vicinity. Here simple rooms may be had for a couple at the low figure of 80 cents a week, or .00 for larger rooms. The standard of self-respect and cleanliness among the tenants is high. Many of the houses were formerly dens of the lowest order, and the Association does not relax its vigil to prevent a recurrence to former conditions. In all there were, in 1917, 125 colored families in houses owned or controlled by the Association. It is probable that in the near future the Association will take over other properties west of Broad Street and south of Lombard in the district into which negroes are moving. The Association is hopeful of doing much more in the future to help the negroes find good homes.

The number of houses owned by the Association at the beginning of 1917 was 179; the number of families in these houses was 244. The agency properties in charge of the Association numbered 224, and there were 460 families housed in them. This gives a total of 704 families in 403 dwellings.

Agency properties have been handled by the Association, to the expressed satisfaction of owners, since it was in the second year of its existence.

The Association charges 7 1/2 per cent. for its management; a charge fully justified by the quantity and the quality of its executive supervision.

The properties handled for others may be thus classified: first, houses received from owners who built with an intent frankly philanthropic, and who realized that the Association was qualified by experience to run these properties to the greater advantage of owner and tenant; second, houses bought at the suggestion of the Association and left in its hands for reconstruction and management; third, houses held as ordinary business investments, and committed to the oversight of the Association for the sake of an assured lucrative result; fourth, houses received from trust companies or estates; fifth, houses turned over by charitable or philanthropic institutions which have received them as bequests.

In the last connection, it is to be observed that the legacy is made to perform a twofold service. Low-wage families are assured a good home at a small cost; and the legatee receives a return which may be put to philanthropic uses. Of course in some cases there is so much to be done to rehabilitate the property bequeathed that for a time there is no income from it. But the possible dual objective of a legacy is worth the thoughtful consideration of those who would have a bequest mean as much as possible to those who come after them.

It is seen from this brief review of the impersonal side of the business operations of the Association that in certain particulars the procedure of Miss Hill has been modified. Miss Hill relied largely on volunteer collectors. The Association in addition to its unpaid collectors employs several who are paid. Miss Hill obtained purchasers for houses which she desired to improve. The Association, as a stock company, has purchased outright a number of houses. It has realized that whereas certain landlords on a grand scale in London controlled vast areas, in Philadelphia, aside from the Girard Estate, with its admirable model homes for persons who can afford them, there are very few owners of large, undivided tracts where blocks of model houses might be created. So it has been accustomed to purchase its groups piecemeal from a number of owners.

It is probable that in the future the Association will undertake to an increasing extent the construction of new dwellings. For a long time to come, if not always, it will continue to renovate old dwellings, for the old dwellings, situated in the congested areas, are the abodes of most of the poor, who are traditionally averse to uprooting; and often the poor feel much more at home in an old house "fixed up" than in a new house to which the adjustment only comes by the slow stages of a social education. Of course a point is reached, especially on a soaring market for all building materials, when it pays better to build anew than to make over the old. The philanthropic side of the Association's endeavor will cling to the old houses. The sheer business astuteness of the enterprise will erect new dwellings. The problem is to keep the due proportion between the business and the philanthropy.

The tenants of the Association are not allowed to sublet or to take in lodgers without explicit authorization. That this regulation is sensible is obvious. Any other course would lead to all the evils of overcrowding and of positive immorality which the organization was created in large part to fight. The housing of the single man is not attempted. The Association is aware of the importance of the bachelor's problem. It is a matter that the munition-factories and other industrial plants in quest of shelter for their employes are daily called upon to consider. Were its means and its executive facilities less limited, there is no doubt that the Association would grapple as courageously and as successfully with this issue of the housing of the single man as with the problem of the housing of families.

Charles H. Ludington, President of the Association, says in his report for the year 1916: "It is also the desire of the Board to give as much publicity as possible to the special lines of service which the Association is now prepared and equipped to offer-- Advice with regard to the restoration to approved standards, and the altering for profitable use of old or unsanitary dwellings. Undertaking, after submitting estimates, the entire carrying out of such improvements and the future supervision and management of the property for the owners if desired. The management of residential properties held by institutions or corporations, insuring for them the maintenance of sanitary and proper conditions, together with the social service offered to the tenants by the Association through rent-collectors trained in our methods. We have frequently been able to render valuable assistance of this kind both to individual owners and to institutions owning real estate of this character, which, through neglect or merely formal management, has deteriorated. Instances have been brought to our attention where, entirely without the knowledge of the owners, conditions have existed not merely unsanitary but also otherwise highly objectionable and which would have subjected the owners to just criticism. This the standards of management of our Association will absolutely prevent. Industrial housing by employers for their employees. The interest in this subject is showing marked increase, and the Association is ready to place its experience and facilities at the disposal of corporations or firms considering the matter, and to prepare plans, procure estimates and supervise construction, and if desired to undertake the management of such properties in and about Philadelphia. Improved housing for wage earners. The experience and information which the Association has gathered, especially in recent years, qualifies it in the judgment of the Board in tendering its services as an expert to anyone who may be ready to consider this character of investment. There is unquestionably in our judgment a need in Philadelphia for new building of this kind, i. e., for dwellings that will rent for under .00 per month. The operating builder is supplying only houses of a more expensive grade and for quick sale, because there is more profit in this for him. That sanitary, durable and comfortable dwellings can be built for rental at less than .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."

To read of the work of the "friendly rent-collector" in cold print is one thing; to feel the pulse of it by personal contact is another matter.

Dr. E. R. L. Gould, in a report that he made to the Commissioner of Labor in 1895 on "The Housing of the Working People," described at length Miss Hill's system of rent-collecting, which made the process so much more than a soulless, impersonal proceeding.

He said, "There are abundant testimonies to the efficiency of rent-collecting as practised by Miss Hill. Her system has been adapted with uniform success in many large cities in Europe and to a smaller extent in this country.... The moral influence of Miss Hill's system has been to admit women to a greater extent into the management of housing companies, a practice which has undoubted advantages. Several of the large London dwelling companies acknowledge that their success, financially and morally, only began with the introduction of rent-collecting through lady volunteers."

A bad tenant is not turned into a good one merely by a periodic demand for money. If all tenants were always in comfortable circumstances, if they never suffered from lack of employment, if protracted illness disabling the bread-winner of the family never spelt acute privation for the rest, if every poor and ignorant foreigner understood from the first his relation to the community and to society at large, and scrupulously maintained this relation for his part, the "friendly rent-collector" might be superfluous. But as conditions stand, the very soul of the Octavia Hill system is this personal contact which has the business transaction for its immediate warrant; and by the acid test of business results its efficacy is demonstrated.

In the great majority of cases the rent-collector does not have to ask a leading question: the tenants are ready enough to flock round her and pour their woes into her ear. Her appearance is often the signal for a fusillade of questions, petitions, and complaints.

"Am I going to get that paint for my stairway, please ma'am?" "The rain last week leaked into the cellar something terrible." "The water in the backyard won't drain off. The bricks around the hydrant has all sunk down." "It's been four days since the man was here to take away the garbage." "The neighbors keeps puttin' ashes in the garbage can, and garbage with the ashes. Sure I dunno who's been doin' it."

Such are the petty complaints that all the rent-collectors hear on all their rounds. These matters might be considered to be wholly within the domain of the superintendent and his mechanics. But the tenants do not differentiate. Their appeal is to anyone who may be supposed to be connected with the Association. Sometimes they ask modestly, meekly. Sometimes they ask in accents of more or less defiant challenge. Miss Hill herself describes how she was locked into a room by an irate woman who said she wouldn't pay the rent till the mantel was repaired, in a house so recently taken over by the new landlady that there had not been an opportunity to attend to the matter.

The friendly rent-collector bides her time, keeps her tongue behind her teeth, and makes allowances for the previous condition of servitude to low ideals and to grasping landlords, which has been that of many of her charges.

The real reward of the work to the right sort of worker is in this lively, daily chance to meet the people and to help them in their problems by the service that is better than the outright gift of money.

Here, for a trivial instance, we come to a humble door where the rent is due, and a poor man has great boxes of laces which he means to move upstairs and store where he lives. There is really no space for the stuff in the one room that he shares with wife and baby. He plans to sell his wares from his cart beside the curbstone on the morrow. The boxes are nearly as big as an upright piano. He cannot afford another place for storage. That is his problem. To you and to me, living in a whole house, the advent of such boxes would be nothing to worry about. But if this vendor can't secure from the friendly rent-collector a suspension of the unwritten rule against overcrowding his small space, he is in a grievous predicament.

A few minutes later we find a whole court in an uproar over an incident that would mean little to those of us who have gardens of size and gardeners of skill. One of the fathers living in the court--a one-armed man--has spent a blistering Sunday afternoon inducing morning-glories to cling to the strings he has put up against the high board fence. The little plot of ground on which his plants grew was perhaps thirty feet long, and a foot and a half wide. He took pride in the result, and his neighbors praised it. When his back was turned a little Polish child of two, living next door, came trotting along, pulled down the wire netting he had arranged in front, and tore off the vines that he had laboriously twisted round the strings.

The indignant neighbors insist, in conclave, that the mother stood in the doorway laughing while the child wrought this mischief. To the friendly rent-collector the mother, with small English but with a profusion of gesture, explains her injured innocence. After long and excited parley, in which everyone who is at home in the court takes part, peace is restored, and the tactful mediator leaves behind her smiles and good humor in place of sullen resentment.

In this case the chief complaint the neighbors brought was that the mother--who was supposed to know so little of our tongue--had used such AWFUL language!

"I didn't use to be a good woman myself," said another mother in this court. "My mother didn't use to be a good woman, either. But now my daughter's comin' on, and I want her to be different. I want her to be a Christian. She sings hymns somethin' lovely."

In an Italian yard near by are old railway-ties high piled, to be chopped into kindling. In their enthusiasm for saving money, the householders are likely to fill the court as high as the roofs with the beams, if not restrained by the rent-collector's timely warning that they must leave some room for other purposes.

One of the houses shows menacing patches of brown specks on the plastering of a tiny bedroom--that means the larvae of vermin. In a hole in the midst of each patch are the live insects. The friendly rent-collector makes a careful note of the fact. There is an evil day in store for this common pest of the tenants in old houses, when the Association shall bring its batteries of formidable disinfectants to bear. The Association is not fond of spreading wall-paper over the surfaces where insects live and thrive.

Here is a young man with a moral inheritance that the friendly rent-collector knows by heart. He has a job slicing bacon with a meat-packing concern. Today is a holiday, he explains. Query: will he hold down the job, or go on drifting? The fever of the wandering ne'er-do-weel burns in his veins. His father is a dipsomaniac, who runs amuck periodically with a carving-knife and finds his foes in his own household. He once killed a man and escaped to an adjoining State. Detectives caught him and he was lodged in the "Pen." He blamed his wife for it, and sent her letters demanding for a shyster lawyer to get him out. He sent her pictures of caskets, as portents of her fate when he should finally emerge from durance vile.

At last she raised the money and got him out. He wept on the doorstep--the neighbors, whose heads were at all the windows, said he shed buckets--and she took pity on him and abandoned her design of procuring a separation. He has been home for a few days, and on this particular day husband and wife are off on a picnic together. The son knows all the story. How long is the peace to last? Will the boy in time follow in the erratic footsteps of the father?

Here is another sinister family history that faces the visitor. The mother is feeble-minded. There are five children. Two of the boys and two of the girls inherit the maternal defect. The other child, a girl, is normal. The father works by fits and starts. A former source of income to the family was a woman boarder of bad character. The Society for Organizing Charity and the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children have interested themselves in these derelicts, and the Octavia Hill Association is trying to help.

Another kind of trouble constantly cropping up is that of the victims of rascally insurance-agents. They turned over their books to the agents to keep. The agents took the money and either did not enter the sums or recorded them incorrectly. In some cases those who expected an old-age pension or at least their burial expenses will not get a cent.

"But," someone may ask, "what has this humanitarian effort to do with rents and dividends? Couldn't the money be obtained and no questions asked, no advice given, no 'hard-luck stories' heard? Business is business. Let the charitable societies, the soup kitchens, the Salvation Army or what you will, look out for the other side of the matter."

The answer to this contention is that a conscientious landlord can hardly be satisfied to accept money from any sort of house without knowing or caring how it is obtained. Several times in the experience of the Association the owners of houses which had descended to base uses were shocked and grieved inexpressibly to learn of it. In one instance a good lady residing in England who had never seen the property managed by her agents in Philadelphia couldn't believe the tales that were told her concerning its condition. The agents themselves were unaware of the facts until the Association reported to them the lively horrors. Owner and agents alike were glad to have the houses pass into the control of the Association, which at once converted them into dwellings which no longer were a blot on the 'scutcheon of the City of Homes.

The question of repairs, when the tenants make their requests or the rent-collector's inspection discovers places where they may be needed, is a matter determined by urgency, and by the amount of money already expended on the property, and by the evinced cooperative spirit of the tenant. It stands to reason that slovenly and destructive occupants are not accorded the same attention that is given to the representatives of those who are clean and careful and prompt in their payments. What a difference there may be on opposite sides of a thin partition-wall! On this side of the wall is a family inclined to dirt and disorder, because of its unperfected social education. On the other side of the wall, only a few inches away, the floor, neatly carpeted, is spotless. The center-table holds a gaudy lamp, or a vase of dried grasses, or lurid paper flowers. There are pictures on the walls, of saints or landscapes or the family, in crayon,--perhaps the bridal couple arm-in-arm, or the head of the house in the gorgeous uniform of a Polish benefit association.

One may find the bureau turned into a shrine, with a crucifix and candles; or perhaps the royal family of Italy is a prized possession in a glorious flamboyancy of colors.

The rent-collector refers all-important questions of improvements to the superintendent for his decision. Part of her special care it is to see that the plumbing is in good order. The Octavia Hill Association is largely responsible for the considerable reduction of the number of cases in which six or eight or a dozen families in a court live off the same hydrant. In one court visited, a pet dog had been giving considerable trouble, since he had learned to turn on the water himself, and would leave it running.

Garbage and ashes come under the rent-collector's supervision, too. When the former is thrown where the latter should be, it becomes necessary to inquire more particularly who had watermelon for dinner, who had chicken, and who had corn-ears--perhaps at a dollar a dozen. In one case where an orthodox Jewish family was blamed by neighbors, the supposed culprits were exonerated by the discovery of a ham-bone in the can when the lid was lifted.

Just as the work of a Red Cross nurse in a war-hospital is a different matter from a debutante's dream of it, so the inspection by the rent-collector may become a very plain and prosaic, undecorative business indeed. She has to see, to think, to know. Nothing is too small for her attention.

The "Conditions of Tenancy" printed in the monthly rent book which the collector carries for receipts, gives the rules she must enforce. All rents must be paid promptly in advance. The tenant will be required to pay for any damage due to his or her own carelessness. The tenant must replace glass broken in the windows, if it is the tenant's fault. Lodgers must not be taken nor rooms sublet without the collector's written permission. Cellars and yards are to be kept free from rubbish, and no animals are allowed in the premises. Garbage and ashes must be kept separate, and rubbish and paper must have their own receptacles. Tenants must keep the sidewalk clean and free from obstruction, and must attend to the removal of ice and snow. Nails or hooks must not be driven in the woodwork without permission, and nothing is to be built in the yard. Each tenant is responsible for a set of keys, which must be surrendered upon vacating. In tenement houses each tenant must do his or her share in cleaning halls, stairs and yards.

There are also explicit suggestions for the care of bathrooms, kitchens, plumbing and garbage cans. There is a brief direction printed on the inside of the cover for the collector's ready reference, giving the addresses and the office-hours of various dispensaries, hospitals and other institutions which may be a present help in time of need to the tenants.

A colored woman on her knees scrubbing a floor that already seemed clean, explained that one couldn't be too "pertickler about them germs." The germs, she explained, were so small you couldn't see them, but they certainly could raise a dreadful rumpus inside a person or a home. She did not know of Metchnikoff or Pasteur or Lister, but she grasped the important idea.

A janitor for a house or a group of houses may be appointed by the Association from among the tenants, at a nominal fee--taking the form, perhaps, of a dollar a month subtracted from the rent. The janitor takes charge of the garbage and the ashcans, and cleans out the houses that are to be rented. She sees to it that the tenants sweep their rooms and hallways and stairs, each doing a part of the premises used in common. The janitor is encouraged to consider herself a working partner of the Association, and she is usually proud of her post.

An important part of the collector's duty is to ascertain and report damage done to plumbing. The plumber also notifies the Association of any damage that is to be traced to the tenant, and the latter defrays part of the cost of repairs by instalments till the whole amount has been paid.

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