The Portland daily press., 1893-08-22
OWNED AND RENTED HOMES.
Some Interesting Facts rom the Census.

|
Bulletins giving summary of the re-
turns of farm and home ownership and
encumbrance have been issued for each
one of the six States in that section of
the country, and from figures therein
contained. it appears that of the total
number of families, 461, 414 resided upon
farms or in houses owned by some mem
Der or memb ers of the families occupying
them, while the remaining SIS per cent,
OF ST. S4S families, lived IN hired habi-
tations. Among farmers, proprietors
| are proportionately more numerous and
tenants less so than is the case among
the non-farming classes of the communi
| ty. Of the $50, 361 New England farming
families no less than IS, 455, or very
nearly 81 per cent of the whole, own their
farms, while of the S43, 901 other fami-
lies only 295, 595, or but trifie over IS
per cent, were not tenants. 1t further
appears that, excluding the farms alto
gether, home ownership is much more
FREQUENT in the rural dis5icts and in the
smaller villages and towns than it is in
the cities, and that as rule the more
populous the city the smaller is the pro-
portion of it's inhabitants who are the
proprietorsTof the houses in which they
live.
In other words, comparing the farm
ers with the people of Boston and Provi-
dence the only two New England cities
with over 100000 inhabitants each, we
find that, proportionately, proprietors of
their own roof-trees are about four and
a half times more numerous among the
former than among the latter Of course
it does not follow that, because the gen.
eral rule is that the proportion Of it's
people who own their homes, a particu
lar city of, say, SO, 600 inhabitants must
necessarily have relatively more home
owners than city of half a million
people Special local conditions may,
and in particular cases do, more than
dency Thus, in Holyoke, with 35, 673 in
habitants, only 1916 per cent of the
families own their homes, as against
49, 49 per cent in Boston, with popula-
ton of AS, 477 In drawing conclusions
of any sort from these census figures we
must keep constantly in mind that they
are statistics No attempt was made by
the Census office to find out how many
people owned the particular residences
in which they lived and how many did
not. Of course it frequently happens
that the proprietor of one or many hous-
es does not live in any one of them, but
may himself be a renter of an entire
house or of fiat" from some one else,
or may live in a boarding house or a
hotel. In the census such person fig
ures as a renter.
The reasons why very large proper
ton of the inhabitant of cities, and
especially of our larger cities, do not
own the houses in which they live are
many, and not few of them are obvi-
city the morexxscostly, as rule, is the
average house in it, the value of the
ground being so much greater. Thus,
while the average Massachusetts mort
gagged farm is worth So, 581 and the aver
age mortgaged house outside of the cities
in cities of from 5000 to 100000 inhabi-
tants in S4,207 and in Boston $7,U26. In
all great urban communities the proper
ton of the purely transient population
is always important, Neither the rich
nor the poor persons SO situated are likely,
except under very peculiar conditions, to
be tho owners of the houses in which
they happen~to be when the census is
taken. Practically all of the tenement,
apartment, and boarding house and hotel
population will be included in the fami-
lies who hire their houses. Then in
cities there are very many people, quite
well enough off to own the houses in
cause, as they happen to be situated, it
is cheaper or more convenient for them
to rent
These and other causes sufficiently ex-
plain the very much larger proportion of
proprietors among the farmers than
among the inhabitants of cities, not only
in New England but throughout the
in, tho1
sections for which the statistics on the
subject have been published can be ac-
cepted as fair samples. 1t is not easy to |
explain however, why it is that in New
England, of the homes other than farms
occupied by their owners, SO much larger
the case with the farms. So much has
been said and written about mortgaged |
farms that it will probably be surprise |
to most persons to learn that in New |
England only % per cent. of the farms |
owned by their occupants are mortgaged
as against 81 per cent. of the homes
outside of the cities, AZ per cent in the
cities of between 5000 and 100, 900 inhabi-
tants, and 80 per cent. in the two cities
with more than 100, 900 inhabitants each.
From the returns thus far published
for other States, however, it seems proba-
BILE that as ruleSgeneral throughout the
country the reverse is true, as it is even
Ill Uuc INcW AoOoUOo VI VMdluG tllu
Vermont. Among these New England
States there are some curious differences
in the proportion of owned and hired and
of free and unencum bered habitations.
The peculiarities of Rhode Island in
which the tenant farmers are proportion
ately very much more numerous than in
the other States, constituting as they do
rs per cent of all the farming families,
while on the other hand less than 30 per
cent of the farm-owning families have
encum brances on their places-a less
proportion than in any other New Eng
land State-may be passed over as unim-
portant ON account Of the small number
of farming families in the State, viz,
only $500 all told. 1t is not however,
so very easy to explain the fact that while
in Maine only eight and in New Hamp-
shire only eleven out of every 100 farm
ing families are renters, in Vermont no
less than eighteen hire the land they
till; or that while only 81 per cent Of
the Maine and New Hampshire farms
occupied by their owners are mortgaged,
in Vermont 40 per cent are subject to
such incum brance. On the other hand,
in respect to the percentage the in
umbrances bear to the value of
the incumb ered property, as that value
L