11 purposes shall have not less than 70 square feet of floor area,1 that ceilings must be 81⁄2 feet high, that every habitable room must have windows opening directly upon a street, alley, yard, or court, and that the window area must be not less than onetenth of the floor area. 12 Although these provisions apply only to "new-law" houses, it must not be forgotten that rooms which are small and dark or inadequately lighted and ventilated are quite as objectionable in old houses as in new ones. In order to emphasize the necessity of giving some attention to the improvement of conditions in old houses, it has seemed worth while to ascertain how far all houses, old as well as new, fall short of the requirements set in the law. In the seven blocks canvassed 375 rooms, 17 of which were in "new-law" houses, and 365 of which were sleeping-rooms, contained less than 70 square feet, and 449 rooms, II of them in "new-law" houses, had ceilings lower than 81⁄2 feet, the minimum height. Six windowless rooms were found, two of them in "new" houses, and 60 other rooms in which the window area was less than 10 per cent of the floor In South Chicago, however, as in the other neighborhoods investigated, the window area is a much less important factor in the problem of light and ventilation than the question of whether the window opens upon a yard or a court of sufficient size or upon a passage-way so narrow that the adjoining building can shut out all light and air. Table XIX shows that 20 per cent of the rooms visited were dark or gloomy, and Table XX shows "Bathrooms are of course excluded. This section of the Code (417) was quoted in full in earlier article in this Journal, XVI, 451. 12 See sec. 413 of the Code, also quoted in this Journal, XVI, 453. that here, as in other parts of Chicago, the dark room is caused by the almost insuperable difficulties in the way of constructing on our long and narrow lots houses that have any light rooms except those with front or rear windows. That is, of the 462 dark and gloomy rooms, 388 were interior rooms in which the only windows were on a so-called "passage-way." TABLE XX "13 *Two of these rooms had windows opening into other rooms but had no direct communication with the outer air. The question of rent is, of course, always a most important aspect of the housing problem. Of the 545 apartments visited, 100 were owned by the people living in them and 441 were known to be rented. The monthly rentals paid by 398 of these tenant families were ascertained and are presented in Table XXI, together with the number of rooms occupied. A study of this table shows that more than half of these families pay a rent of $9 a month or less, that only 50 families pay more than $10 a month, and that none pay more than $15. It is of interest that, although in all of the other districts there were some rents higher than $15-the highest rent paid. here the poorer people pay relatively higher rents here than in any other section studied; that is, in the Polish district on the Northwest Side, and in the Bohemian district on the West Side, half of the people pay only $7.50 or less, in the stockyards district $8 or less, in the Jewish district $8.50 or less, whereas it appears that in South Chicago the median rent is $9. One ex "It may be recalled that this term is merely used to describe the space between two parallel houses and in the great majority of cases it is much too narrow to serve as a bona fide passage-way. planation of high rents is the lodger. It is, of course, frequently said that the practice of taking lodgers is due to the high rents. It would probably be nearer the truth to say that lodgers are frequently a cause of high rents. Landlords and agents are keen to see an opportunity to charge higher rents if the family TABLE XXI NUMBER OF APARTMENTS FOR WHICH SPECIFIED MONTHLY RENTALS ARE PAID TOGETHER WITH NUMBER OF ROOMS can increase its ability to pay by taking lodgers. A study of Table XXII furnishes some interesting evidence on this point, for it appears that the districts which have the largest proportion of lodgers are also the districts of high rents. In South Chicago the unique system of adding an extra fifty cents to the rent for every lodger taken was found to be a common practice among landlords. |