HOUSING AND RENTS IN AMERICAN TOWNS [THE British Board of Trade Report on working-class rents, etc., in the principal industrial towns of the United States (made in April, 1911), presents a comparison by means of index numbers, of average rents for working-class houses and apartments in the various towns investigated. The dwellings are classed merely by the number of rooms (the mean between the lowest and highest rates that predominate being determined); and thus the comparison between large and small cities leaves out of account differences in yards and gardens, in height of building, etc. A four-room apartment on the fifth floor, without a foot of yard enters into the estimate just as does a separate one-story, four-room cottage with a yard. The difficulties are recognized in the report, where they are deemed unavoidable. The method of computing the averages, by a somewhat elaborate process, having been explained, the report says (p. xxv. ff.):] In the following table the index numbers so calculated are given, showing the relative level of rents in each of the towns investigated as compared with New York, the predominant rents in that town being taken as the base (=100): BENTS INDEX NUMBERS IN DESCENDING ORDER. It will be observed from the above table that, while the index number for St. Louis is slightly higher than that for New York as a whole, the figure for the great borough of Manhattan, still often regarded as New York proper and still the center of the most congested areas in the world, is 109, while that for the borough of Brooklyn is 88. Apart from St. Louis, Pittsburg (a rapidly growing industrial center), Memphis (a city hardly less Western than Southern in temper and stage of development), and Cincinnati (still somewhat hampered in the development of its housing accommodation by physical conditions), also stand out as towns in which the range of rentals is relatively high. Brockton, the highest among the New England towns, is the center of a staple industry in which wages and the standard of comfort are not only generally high but more approximately uniform than in most towns. Baltimore and Detroit, with index numbers respectively 46 and 43 per cent., lower than that for New York, are the most important towns included among the more cheaply rented, although the position of Cleveland, Milwaukee and Chicago is not far removed, with index numbers of 64, 66 and 70 respectively. Between New York and Detroit, which ranks as one of the "home cities" of America, Philadelphia, which is best known by this title, occupies a middle position with an index number of 79. Although wide differences are thus shown in rents as between town and town, the local variations, apart from the unique position occupied by New York itself, are much less marked when these are grouped geographically, as the following table shows: RENTS INDEX NUMBERS FOR GEOGRAPHICAL GROUPS. H The lowest index number is that for the New England group, 66, a figure to which that for the other Eastern towns closely approximates. The six Central towns include Muncie, a small town in which industrial conditions, largely owing to the closing of steel-rolling mills, had been recently depressed and in which rents in 1909 were exceptionally low in consequence. Omitting Muncie, the index number of the Central group is 76, or nearly as high as that for the Middle West, the towns in which, with a mean index number of 79, stand out as the most highly rented geographical group of all. The Southern group includes Memphis, a town that is largely dominated by the Western spirit and where rents are high. It differs in tone and character from the other five towns in this group and, excluding Memphis, the mean index number for dwellings in the occupation of whites for the remaining five Southern towns is 72, a figure which still seems a relatively high one for a part of the country in which the temperature is never low and in which shelter is perhaps equally important as a protection from heat as from cold. In these towns, however, homes are generally self-contained and sites relatively liberal, and there is practically no congestion, while the towns themselves are largely representative of the new industrial South. In spite of the complex and often local causes that help to determine rent levels, when the towns are grouped on the basis of population a general conformity with the rule that the rents of large towns tend to be higher than those of smaller ones is shown, and in this respect the position is illustrated in the following table: BENTS INDEX NUMBERS FOR POPULATION GROUPS. Population group. NEW YORK (population 4,766,883).. 78 73 69 5 64 Other towns with more than 500,000 inhabitants 8 The Census of 1900 gives particulars of the number of dwelling-houses owned by their occupiers either free or encumbered, and the combined percentages ranged at that date, so far as the towns covered by the inquiries are concerned, from a maximum of 39.1 in Detroit to a minimum of 12.1 in New York. In six cases the percentages exceeded 30, namely in Detroit, as mentioned, with 39.1 per cent., 16.6 per cent. being encumbered; Cleveland with 37.4 per cent., 16.1 per cent. being encumbered; Milwaukee with 35.9 per cent., 19.4 per cent. being encumbered; Duluth with 35.7 per cent., 11.5 per cent. being encumbered; Brockton with 33.9 per cent., 23.1 per cent. being encumbered; and Muncie with 32.7 per cent., 14.8 per cent. being encumbered. In fourteen of the towns investigated the numbers of dwelling-houses owned by their occupiers, both free and encumbered, exceeded 20 per cent. and were under 30 per cent.; in eight towns, including five of the six Southern towns with large proportions of their population colored, the combined percentage fell below 20; the remaining three towns being Boston with 18.9 per cent., Fall River with 18.0 per cent., and New York, as mentioned, with 12.1 per cent. It must be observed that the above percentages refer to dwelling-houses of every kind irrespective of the class of occupier, and that it is impossible, therefore, to state to what extent the owners belonged to the wage-earning class. The chief methods by which purchases are arranged are either through the medium of building and loan associations or through the special facilities offered by builders and real estate companies. Building and loan associations are widely scattered throughout the country, and are especially numerous in Philadelphia, but the competing activities of builders and companies, with many variations on the general plan of a percentage payment of the price in cash with first and sometimes second mortgages and sometimes on a simple plan of payment by monthly instalments, are still more general. As a rule ownership includes the freehold, but in Baltimore the buildings are frequently held alone, the ground rent being a separate and permanent charge. To a less extent a similar practice prevails in Fall River. As regards foreigners, among those who appear to be the most active buyers of real estate are the Germans, Italians, and Jews, but also the Poles in towns such as Detroit and Milwaukee, the Bohemians in Chicago, and the Scandinavians in Duluth and Minneapolis-St. Paul. The great effort made to become house-owners is frequently mentioned in the town reports, a special impulse to incur a present sacrifice being doubtless often found in the confidence with which a future rise in the value of land is anticipated. When a customary local type of building is for the accommodation of more than a single family, the dwelling is still often purchased by small owners and one or more tenements, as the case may be, are then sublet. This would be the usual and, indeed, under local conditions, the almost necessary practice in such towns as New York and even Boston, but subletting part of what is designed for the accommodation of a single family, or the introduction of a disproportionate number of lodgers and boarders, is also apt to follow on purchase, as among the Poles in Milwaukee. In general it may be observed that the practice of purchasing dwellings by wage-earners in the United States has assumed large proportions; that it is regarded as a satisfactory feature of the urban situation; and that, in spite of the large transient element of the population, it is apparently increasing. [In the comments made on conditions found, some interesting problems of house rents are suggested, page xxi:] The normal difficulties of standardizing dwelling accommodation in the United States are increased by the special importance that attaches there to what is understood by "location," a quality that every town both in the Old and the New World exhibits in some measure, but one which assumes a distinctive character when segregation is apt to follow not only the more usual broad distinctions of class and income but also minor subdivisions due to race and color. In general, how |