Good housing that pays /

by Fullerton L. Waldo

In each case a tenant was ready for the house when it was ready for him. The rental is $8.50 per month for an apartment of two rooms and bath, with a pantry having wash-tubs and a range in one of the rooms. Each of the two families in an apartment house has a partitioned share of the cellar. An apartment of two rooms, kitchen and bath is to be had for $10.50. The rental is $13.50 for the one family houses, which give the tenant five rooms, with bath and furnace. There is at all times a waiting-list for these eminently delightful and desirable little homes close to a particularly busy center of diversified manufacturing enterprise.

At the end of the eleven months to November, 1916, the rent amounted to $5,517.65 out of a possible $5,676,—the difference being due to the fact that periods of occupancy did not precisely overlap. After deducting expenses and interest paid on mortgages the Model Homes Company was able to show a profit of $1,873.19; of this sum it set aside $400 for a depreciation account; and it paid to the Association $1,400, which was a seven per cent. return on the $20,000 invested by the Association. (See page [121].)

A rebate of one-half of one month’s rent was made to tenants who had lived in an apartment or a house a year and done no careless damage requiring repairs. Trees were planted in the yard and before the houses, and the occupants have always evinced a lively interest in their little garden-plots. The nationality census is interesting. In the first year there were these families: Scotch, 3, German, 5, French, 2, Norwegian, 5, Swedish, 1, Italian, 1, American-born, 31 (18 of Irish extraction),—a total of 48.

In 1914–15 the Association shared the gratitude of certain poor families which had no work in sight for the bread-winner, by arranging with the Emergency Aid Committee to supply the necessary materials and supervision if the Committee would provide the wages of laborers and mechanics engaged in repair work on the properties. Nine men began work on this basis in February, and fifty at one time were finally employed. The work was continued until July, when funds were no longer available. In all, eighty men benefited by the arrangement: seventeen painters, eight carpenters, fifty-five laborers. From the Emergency Aid Committee $4,000 was received, and was disbursed for wages, tools, car-fare and incidental expenses. Two hundred houses were completely put in order and painted, yards were repaved, fences were rebuilt, grading was done, and a vacant area was prepared for gardening purposes. Moreover, men who knew nothing of plastering or cement work learned how to do it, and thus acquired a new accomplishment of market value. They put down floors, relaid walks, whitewashed cellars, and concreted walls where dampness had exuded. Some of these men who came as utterly green hands still remain in the employ of the Association.

In 1916 the Whittier Centre, with whose purposes the Association is wholly in sympathy, carried out a plan for improved housing facilities for the negro population. The Centre is organized for the study of this problem, and for practical measures devised as the outcome thereof. It formed the Whittier Centre Housing Company, with a capital of $25,000, which took title to property at Dickinson and Opal Streets. The planning and construction of the first group of houses was put in the hands of the Association, and Mr. Feld supervised the building of seven two-family dwellings with apartments of three rooms and bath, at a rental of $3.00 and $3.50 a week. As an indication of the lively demand for such cleanly and attractive quarters, it should be noted that there were two hundred applications for the fourteen apartments available.

That this enterprise pays is shown by the fact that in midsummer of 1917 a dividend of 5 per cent. was paid.

Cambria Street Houses of the Richmond Group. Playground in the Rear, Between the Side Rows of Houses. One Family Houses. 5 Rooms, Bath, and Heater in Each. Rent, $13.50 Per Month.

Gaul Street Houses, Richmond Group. First and Last Four Houses Are Two-Family Houses, With 3 Rooms and Bath on Each Floor. Rent $10.50 Per Month Per Apartment. The Houses in the Center of the Group are 5 Room Dwellings. Rent $13.50 Per Month.