New Britain herald., 1916-04-07
ROOM IN ROME FOR
 EVERY INHAbITANT
Many Model Apartment Houses
 Solve Problem Of Living

Correspondence of The Associated Press.) Rome Italy, March 23.-For the first time in the history of modern | Rome there are enough houses in the city to accommodate it's population. According to recent municipal statis- tics, the city has almost room for each of it's 600,0O0 inhabitants In the twelve-period cited, the popula- tion has increased ,106, 6,500, the num- Der of new rooms 91,887, and at a total building cost of $12,OOO,OOO. The solution of the housing problem of Rome has been closely studied by American cities through their own experts and through United States consular reports because here new. cleaner, and roomier dwellings have not meant an increase but a decrease in rents for poor people.
 The problem in Rome has offered peculiar difficulties, partly because Rome has been at times the most pop ulOus of the cities of the world. In it's most populous days, when it's inhabi- tants have been variously estimated at from one to three millions, it solved it's housing problem by the invention of the SkyScraper of nine stories. When the temporal power of the Papacy end ed in 1870, Rome had a population of O,OOO, living in ancient, damp and unh ealthy stone houses and since that date it has been struggling to provide enough room for it's yearly increasing population, coming in part from for eign countries but principally from it's own provinces.
 The two citizens who have been most prominently identified with the
 
 Mayor Nathan and former Premier Luigi Luzzatt. The method of the latter was to raise city taxes on old houses and to let new ones go free of taxes for a given period. Mayor Ma than put an extra tax of three per cent. on land on which the owners re- fused to build. He also secured the adoption of ordinances providing low taxes for dwellings occupying but one fourth of the building plot and the rent of an apartment of which did not exceed $2O a month. Other parts of the scheme involved the pres ervation of ancient Rome as public monuments and parks and inducing the poor population to leave the old buildings for the higher, healthy sec tions outside the ancient and III medieval sites.
 Model Apartment Houses.
 The result of these various measures has been the building up of the over Tiber section known as Pratt and the higher quarter above the ancient city, which Eeally lies in the Tiber bOttOms known as Alta Roma, outside of POr- tia Pia and generally surrounding the central station of the State railway. In these quarters may be seen blocks of model apartment houses that are not unlike in aspect those in the newly built uptown sections of New York city, the suburbs of Chicago, Kansas City, or Cincinnati With the improve ment of the street car communications the poorer people are also gradually removing far outside the ancient walls and building little homes on the Cam 1 pagna Romano which thirty years ago 1 was a bandit-infested desert filled 1 with the ruins of ancient Rome.
 Meanwhile ancient and medieval 1 Rome is being cleaned up and beauti- fled. While many of the famous pal aces are still inhabited by the owning 1 princes, theyq are slowly abandoning them, sub-letting parts for business offices and living apartments, them selves building new palaces and villas on the Janiculum, the Via NOmentana | and elsewhere.
 The effort of the Italian government to give employment to laborers whom l the war has thrown out of their regu- lar positions has in some instances l work on new public build ings, and when the war is over it is expected that the ambitious project of tearing down some of the squalid