Good housing that pays /

by Fullerton L. Waldo

Just as the work of a Red Cross nurse in a war-hospital is a different matter from a debutante’s dream of it, so the inspection by the rent-collector may become a very plain and prosaic, undecorative business indeed. She has to see, to think, to know. Nothing is too small for her attention.

The “Conditions of Tenancy” printed in the monthly rent book which the collector carries for receipts, gives the rules she must enforce. All rents must be paid promptly in advance. The tenant will be required to pay for any damage due to his or her own carelessness. The tenant must replace glass broken in the windows, if it is the tenant’s fault. Lodgers must not be taken nor rooms sublet without the collector’s written permission. Cellars and yards are to be kept free from rubbish, and no animals are allowed in the premises. Garbage and ashes must be kept separate, and rubbish and paper must have their own receptacles. Tenants must keep the sidewalk clean and free from obstruction, and must attend to the removal of ice and snow. Nails or hooks must not be driven in the woodwork without permission, and nothing is to be built in the yard. Each tenant is responsible for a set of keys, which must be surrendered upon vacating. In tenement houses each tenant must do his or her share in cleaning halls, stairs and yards.

There are also explicit suggestions for the care of bathrooms, kitchens, plumbing and garbage cans. There is a brief direction printed on the inside of the cover for the collector’s ready reference, giving the addresses and the office-hours of various dispensaries, hospitals and other institutions which may be a present help in time of need to the tenants.

A colored woman on her knees scrubbing a floor that already seemed clean, explained that one couldn’t be too “pertickler about them germs.” The germs, she explained, were so small you couldn’t see them, but they certainly could raise a dreadful rumpus inside a person or a home. She did not know of Metchnikoff or Pasteur or Lister, but she grasped the important idea.

A janitor for a house or a group of houses may be appointed by the Association from among the tenants, at a nominal fee—taking the form, perhaps, of a dollar a month subtracted from the rent. The janitor takes charge of the garbage and the ashcans, and cleans out the houses that are to be rented. She sees to it that the tenants sweep their rooms and hallways and stairs, each doing a part of the premises used in common. The janitor is encouraged to consider herself a working partner of the Association, and she is usually proud of her post.

An important part of the collector’s duty is to ascertain and report damage done to plumbing. The plumber also notifies the Association of any damage that is to be traced to the tenant, and the latter defrays part of the cost of repairs by instalments till the whole amount has been paid.

Careful calculation showed that in a group of 140 families, for one year, the cost of repairs for plumbing due to the tenants’ carelessness was $32. The real estate officer of a large trust company declared this an excellent record.

As the rent-collector of tact and insight makes her rounds the mechanical transaction of requesting and receipting for the rent is accomplished frictionlessly and with dispatch in the great majority of instances. The services of the constable, at a cost of $2.00, to dispossess a family are rarely and very regretfully called into requisition. But the Association stands for no shillyshallying. It requires prompt payment. It insists that those who occupy its houses shall fulfil the few simple regulations it has established. It does not hesitate to invoke the arm of the law when the need arises, and the tenants soon become aware of the fact. Most of them, happy to be under a fair and considerate landlord, are punctual, peaceful and contented. “I’ll never get another landlord like you,” said an old Jew, compelled for reasons of his own to move, as he trudged dolefully away wagging his beard.

The cases in which the Association has to proceed to the extreme penalty of eviction may be similar to that of the woman who represented herself as a widow with four children. The children were mythical. She took in four male boarders, in flagrant defiance of the strict rule that forbids taking boarders or subletting without the Association’s consent. There was nothing to do but to put her out, inexorably.

The rent-collector takes with her wherever she goes her moneybag, containing a small card-catalogue to check off payments, which are entered in the office ledgers, receipt-books, blank forms for leases, and paper for memoranda. Sometimes tenants who fail to have the sum ready when the call is made promise to bring it to the office, and rarely do they fail to keep their word. Italians are particularly punctilious in their payments. The man who after an absence of two months came back and paid up for the whole time, though there were a few days he was not, bound to pay for, saying proudly, “I am an honorable gentleman,” was merely typical of his compatriots.