The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1916-04-06
ROME, FOR FIRST
 TIMEHAS ENOUGH DWELLING HOUSES
Problem of Modern City Is Being Solved by Muni-
 cipal Measures.

Rome, sItaly, April 6.-For the first
 time in the history of modern Rome
 there are enough houses in the city
 to accommodate it's population. Ac-
 cording to recent municipal statistics,
 the city has almost a room for each of
 it's 60O,OoO inhabitants. In the
 period cited, the population has in
 creased 106, 300, the number of new
 rooms 92,8S7, and at a total building
 cost of $12,OO0,OO0.
 The solution of the housing prob lem 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 and at other times the least popu1ous of the cities of the world. In
 it's most populous days, when its in habitants have been 'variously esti-
 mated 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 ended in 1870, Rome had a population of 200, ,000, living in ancient, damp and unhealthy stone houses, and since that date it has been struggling to provide enough room for it's yearly increasing popu- 1ation, coming in part from foreign countries but principally from it's own provinces.
 l The two citizens who have been
 most prominently identified with the solution of. the problem are former Mayor Nathan and former Premier
 Luigi Luzzatti. The method of the latter was to raise city taxes on old
 houses and to let new ones go free of  than put an extra tax of three per cent on land on which the owners refused to build. He also secured the adop- ton of ordinances providing low tax es for dwellings occupying but one fourth of the building plot and the rent of an apartment of which did not
 exceed $20 a month. Other parts of the scheme involved the preserva- ton of ancient Rome as public monu- ments and parks and inducing the poor population to leave the old build ings for the higher, healthy sections outside the ancient and medieval sites. The result of these various nnea- sures has been the building up of the over Tiber section known as Pratt and the high quarter above the ancient city, which really lies in the Tiber bot toms, known as Alta Roma, outside of Portia Pia and generally surrounding the central station of the State Rail
 way. 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
 improvement of the street car commit
 nications, the poorer people are also
 gradually removing far outside the ancient walls and building little homes
 on the Campagna Romano which thir- ty years ago was a bandit infested
 desert filled with the ruins of ancient
 Rome.
 Meanwhile ancient and medieval
 Rome is being cleaned up and beauti- fled. While many of the famous pal
 aces are still inhabited by the owning
 princes, they are slowly abandoning them, sub-letting parts for business offices and living apartments, them selves building new palaces and villas on the JaniculuYn, the Via Nomenta- ma and elsewhere.
 The effort of the Italian government to give employment to laborers whom the war has thrown out of their reg uIar positions has in some instances
 stimulated work on new public build ings, and when the war is over it.is ex- pected that the ambitious project of tearing downt some of the squalid dwellings near the Vatican will be put into execution and new streets laid forming a proper vista to St. Peters.