THE PITTSBURGH DISTRICT AND THE HOUSING SITUATION
The direct work of investigation in the field of housing reform, carried on by the Pittsburgh Survey, has been intentionally limited to the question of sanitary regulation. That was the first prime need to be met. The work has been carried on under the supervision of Lawrence Veiller, the foremost authority on housing reform in this country. Mr. Veiller was the secretary of the New York State Tenement House Commission in 1900, first deputy commissioner of the New York City Tenement House Department, and is director of the Department for the Improvement of Social Conditions of the New York Charity Organization Society.
In illustrations and text, no attempt is made to present a review of the development of model towns in the Pittsburgh District, or the construction of single and two-family houses. These are matters which will properly come before committees on building construction and town planning of the new Pittsburgh Civic Improvement Commission.
Real estate dealers and builders have not been inactive in Pittsburgh; but the situation is so serious as to demand the development of a constructive public policy.
It demands such town planning and traction development as will open up wider suburban areas and relieve congestion. It demands such radical modification of the tax system, as will put a premium, as in metropolitan Boston, on home building; rather than a premium, as in Pittsburgh, on the speculative holding of unimproved land. Pittsburgh might well be the first city to try out in America the co-operative building scheme which has gained so much momentum in England, and by which the shifting industrial worker owns not a house, but stock in a housing company, which builds wholesale. Such a plan would admirably supplement the operations of the realty companies and building and loan associations in housing the growing industrial force of the steel district, and would offer an opportunity for investment at five per cent and the public good such as opens in no other direction to the man of large means and large imagination who would leave his impress on the Pittsburgh District.
—DIRECTOR PITTSBURGH SURVEY.
Such a condition could not go on indefinitely. The leaders in the societies themselves insisted upon a better sensing of social responsibility, which meant simply the better realization of one principle, co-operation, the signpost to the second stage of growth. This led not only to the manifold kinds of co-operation made possible by the formation of an Associated Charities, but to a joining of forces in other directions.
So the march of social reform goes on, with the charitable agencies of the city more and more fulfilling their function of rightly estimating causes and tendencies, of providing the fair chance to the dependent and defenceless by intelligent, co-ordinated, family treatment, and of educating the public towards the need of social legislation and regeneration.
OLD PLANING MILL KNOWN AS TAMMANY HALL, TORN DOWN THROUGH THE ACTIVITY OF THE BOARD OF HEALTH.
Twenty-five families were formerly housed here in 26 rooms. Building to left continues to be occupied as tenement—10 families and 2 stores occupying 13 rooms. To the rear can be seen remnant of the planing mill. Three families occupy three rooms reached through the doors opening off the gallery.
