The Cost of Shelter

by Ellen H. Richards

In the city? Since physicians will surely be more insistent on light, as well as fresh air, roof-gardens and balconies and glazed walls, so to speak, will be arranged by the architect so as not to offend the eye and yet to accomplish the results. He will cease from trying to put the new ideas of the twentieth century into the old houses of the eighteenth or fifteenth even, and that beauty, which is fitness, will come forth from the tangle of ugliness everywhere. If, as the economist tells us, "cost measures lack of adjustment," then the perfectly adjusted house will not be costly in reality, it will be adapted to the production and protection of effective human beings.

The cellar has for some years been changing to a storage for trunks instead of vegetables. The old-fashioned housewife exclaims at the lack of storage in the house of to-day, and we are eliminating it still more. A twentieth-century axiom is, "Throw or give away everything you have not immediate or prospective use for." It is as true of household furniture as of books; only the very best is of any value second-hand. Our young people may have heirlooms, but they will buy very little in the way of sideboards or first editions. The moral of modern tendencies is, buy only what you are sure you will need or what you care for so intensely that you will keep it come what may. Housing of possible treasures is far too costly.

At the foundation of the ethical side of ownership is the primitive impulse of possession, that ownership which led to wife-capture, to feudal castles, to accumulation of things, and to-day is expressed by the man who prefers to have his steak cooked in his own kitchen even if it is burned.

It is notorious that most of us put up with discomfort if it is caused by our own. A family of eight will use one bath-room without murmur if the house is theirs, but will complain loudly if the landlord will not add two without increasing the rent.

At the foundation of what seem exorbitant rents is this demand for modern improvements in old houses, and the atrocious carelessness of tenants of property. It is not their own, and they do not obey the golden rule in the use of it.

Every five years or so plumbing laws are changed, and if an old house is touched the fixtures and pipes must be all renewed. Tenants have learned to fear the sanitation of old houses, and yet abuse the appliances they should care for.

Public ownership or corporate ownership or an increased lawlessness are accountable for a disregard of others' rights and of property which is unnecessarily increasing the cost of living.

I have said elsewhere that it is not because the landlord does not want children in the house but because he does not want such ill-bred children, vandals, who have no respect for anything. He charges high rent because his investment is good for only ten years.

The shibboleth of duty to own a home has so strong a hold on the moral sense of the people that it is made use of by the promoter who may in some cases think himself the philanthropist he intends others to call him. I mean that the duty of owning and the heinousness of paying rent are so ingrained that buying on the instalment plan has seemed a righteous thing, even with the examples of broken lives in plain sight. As an incentive to save, if there were anything to save, it might have been justified in the days of feudalism. But for an independent American to confess that he cannot put money in the bank, and that he must bind himself and his family to slavery, for the sake of owning a bit of property which they will probably wish to sell before they have it paid for, is disgraceful. Intelligent men should see that here is the profit in the transaction; that enough go to the wall to pay for the trouble of the rest, just as in life insurance enough die before the expected time to put money in the pockets of the riskers.

A drunken father may need to be held, but the young professor, the lawyer, the engineer, should have sufficient self-respect and firmness to save that which in his judgment is necessary, without being tied by "the instalment plan." This method is a very viper in the finances of to-day. The wise business man never ventures more than he can afford to lose in a risk, but the man who takes bread and milk from his children to invest in "a sure thing" takes a risk with what is not his to give.