The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1933-06-09
BY A HOME RELIEF BUREAU
INVESTIGATOR
ARTICI 2


greater factor in driving New York
workers to ask the Home Relief Blu
reau for help than is hunger. Yet OF
all the failures of the Home Relief
Bureau to provide the jobless with
the necessaries of life, the failure to
pay rents or at least to stop evic-
tons is the most glaring.
Take the case of young MIR. c., a
Negro laborer living in Lower Man
haitian. He came to the Home Relief
Bureau TO ask for help because the
landlord threatened to dispossess
him After waiting three weeks for
q visit from a Home Relief Bureau
representative, he received dispos-
sess notice. Again he went to the
Bureau, and again he was told to
wait. After another week of wait
ing he and his wife decided that the
Bureau did not intend to help them,
Break Up Homes.
They distributed their furniture
among their friends and the woman
went to live with friend who could
shelter her temporarily. The man
spent the night in the hallway and
appeared at the relief office the fol-
lowing morning to recite his plight.
He was informed that since his
wife was not living with him and
was temporarily provided for she
didn'J need any help. AS for him, he
ought to go to the Municipal Lodg-
ing House, he was told, because the
Home Relief Bureau doesn't help
single men.
Then there is the case of the Gross
man family of 961 Faile St, the
Bronx, who reported to the Home Re
lief Bureau on May "a that they
we're being evicted. Mr.. Grossman
was told that the Bureau could not
pay his rent because it was possible
for his family to move in with his
wife's parents. He objected to this
scheme because his wife suffers from
a mental ailment and one of his chill
dren has heart trouble. The crowd
ing would have bad effect on every
body. he said. That, replied the Of
fetal. is no concern of the Home Re
lief Bureau.
These instances are not isolated
They are representative of the policy
of the Home Relief Bureau in the
matter Of paying rents. The policy
is simple enough, too. 1t consists Of
a determination to pay as little and
infrequently as possible,
From November l, 1881, to August
81. 1882, the Home Relief Bureau
paid out for rents a total Of about
$1,000 900 for the $4,000 families which
were receiving active aid during that
period. This would mean an average
Of about $3.50 per family for the
entire period from November, 1881, to
August, 1892.
Refuse to Pay Rents.
The refusal to pay rents on the
grounds that there is no money, or
Oh any other grounds, is direct
violation even of their own laws I'M
der which the Home Relief Bureaus
exist Section l Of the Emergency
Laws which created the bureaus de-
elares expressly that:
1.-THE provisions of any general,
special or local laws . which limit
or forbid the furnishing Of shelter,
fuel, clothing, light and medical at
tendance shall not apply to re-
lief authorized under this act"
The half-hearted and brutal man
ner in which the bureaus have
handled the struggle of thousands of
families to keep roofs over their
heads is confessed in the report Of
the Temporary Emergency Relief Ad-
ministration under which the Home
Relief Bureaus function:
Public welfare officials have been
inclined to limit their relief giving to
food and fuel orders assuming that
families could solve their rent prob
lens through part-tine earning or
the patience and good nature OF their
landlords. In this extended period
Of unemployment, with families COM
ing 10 the attention Of relief agen-
cies only after they have exhausted
all their resources and usually with
large Accommodations Of unpaid rent,
shelter is becoming an Increasingly
difficult problem. The present
haphazard methods OF dealing with
the payment of rents cannot be con-
tinued indefinitely without serious
consequences.
Dispossess Triple.
Yet the "haphazard methods" are
being continued In April Of this
wear 34,544 dispossess petitions were
filed in the courts Of New York
more than three times as many as
were filed for in the previous month,
March. The exact number of evic-
tions carried out as result of these
dispossess is hard to estimate. Thou
sands Of families who receive dispos-
esses move voluntarily" The ques-
ton, where do they go, can be an
svered only by the generally accepted
fact that more families are living in
less rooms than at any time in New
Yorks history.
This is at a time when the Tene-
nent Houee Department reports that
there are 2o1 ,4o6 vacant apartments
in the city, or more apartments than
each family now receiving work relief
or home relief.
No. 18th Ave.
No. /, Fifth Ave, paragon Of ex-
elusive housing in Lower Manhattan
stands with half of its 225 apart
ments empty, while in the alleywsys
behind the buildings scores of home
less men quarrel nightly with en-
ployes Of the building for the right
to bask in the heat issuing from the
furnace rooms. Nor is it only the
exclusive sxyscraper mansions OF
Fifth, Park, Madison and Riverside
Drive that go untenanted while
workers sleep in subways or huddle
together in fire-trap tenen1erts. Mod
ern apartment houses in the Bronx,
Brooklyn ard Queens, once within