The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1932-02-04

This Is the third Of a series Of articles
on housing conditions in this country.
This material is published by permission
OF Fortune Magazine.
In Wednesdays instaTment. proof
was given Of the statement that
housing conditions in the United
states we're such that less than half
OF the homes in America measure UP
TO the minimum standard of health
and decency.
This proof was not taken from a
Dickenesque type of humanitarian
literature, but from the prosaic and
more factual report OF the New York
bureau of housing, made for the
Governor in 1929.
In the city of New York, the
tenement history is one of the most
shameful of human records. No
where have the estates of early
landowners benefited more richly
from an increase in real estate
values, for which their founders
we're very slightly responsible, and
nowhere have their heirs repaid
their beneflce with greater harm.
Tenements Still Exist
The great American synonym for
hypocrisy is the Trinity tenement
case of 1894 when the trustees of
the richest church in the country
refused to obey an ordinance re-
quiring them to supply water to
each floor Of their tenements in
Greenwich Village, in spite of the
report of the board of health that
the death rate in eighty-three of
the church's tenements was a third
again above the general rate. Null
berry Bend and Bone Alley and
Gotham Court, though names only
in our time, still are names to blush
for.
Unhappily it is not as history
alone that the slumS of New York
exist. The so-called old testament
laws, which were so unsatisfactory
in 1901 that they begot the new
tenement law, still house from a
quarter to third of New York's
population; 100000 people still in
habit them, and at the present rate
of demolition it will take 1873 years
to get rid Of them.
Rooms without Light
What that means in precise terms
Is that 100000 and perhaps 100000
of the interior rooms without win
dows to the outer air which were
dac,-iad II, 1QQ1 efi1I avief
But 1901 is only thirty years ago.
We can return to 1885 and find that |
more than half the tenements con-
demned by the commission Of that |
year still are standing and house
human beings.
The Lung block, officially con-
demned time after time, still stands |
a few short city blocks from Al |
Smiths old nome at Is Oliver street. |
Only within month has it been
threatened-and by real estate
development, not by the police.
1t is unnecessary to add to such
facts the usual descriptions of par
ticular homes. An investigator may
find any kind of human misery he
desires.
Flats Are Crowded
A three-room apartment will
will house eleven people; or nine
people will live in a three-room
basement apartment Originally de-
signed for coal bins and storage
lockers, with one windowless room,
one room with window on an area
way, or a two-room, top-floor apart
ment will contain four beds, a crib,
a coal range, a sink, washtub, a
dresser, a chair and nine humans.
Air will be anything from foul to
merely stale. Baths will not exist.
Toilets will be hall toilets shared by
as many as twenty-five people. Hall
ways and stairs will be filthy and
black.
If the tenants frequently are to
blame for the condition Of their
homes, it is nevertheless question
whether the beastly tenant begets
the bad housing or the bad housing
begets the beastly tenant.
Next. Not in Big Cities Alone.