Camp No. 6, The Speedway, showing barracks
Camps in Golden Gate Park
This committee was discharged from duty, on request of its chairman, two weeks after its appointment, but its members continued to incur unauthorized expense for at least four weeks longer. The committee made such a fine showing for speed that its work got ready recognition, speed in those first days being at a premium; but its lack of deliberation led to the embarrassment of the relief authorities. The barracks could not be connected with street sewers because they were situated on low ground, so later there was difficulty in disposing of waste and surface water. One of the camps, Camp 6, could not be given fire protection, and both camps had to have heavy additions made to the initial expenditures to secure greater privacy and protection against drafts. In them the refugees were brought into an association so close as to be either demoralizing or humiliating. Both camps would probably soon have been closed if the authorities had felt justified in abandoning them after the large expenditure made. The initial mistake was to erect barracks during the emergency period. Tents, which the army and the American National Red Cross stood ready to provide, were much more practical. They could be moved at small expense from place to place, and until the rainy season set in they furnished sufficient shelter. Tents, not barracks, were the need of the emergency period.
The two barracks built in Golden Gate Park by the committee on housing the homeless were No. 1, known later as Camp 5, near the Children’s Playground, and No. 2, known later as Camp 6, or the Speedway Camp. Camp 5 consisted of 18 buildings with 16 two-room apartments in each, separated by a partition only 8 feet high. The rooms were 10 feet square—a front room with a window and a door and a rear room with no window or outside door. Camp 6 was of the same type of construction and consisted of 10 barracks and separate buildings for hospital, laundry, and other general purposes. The barracks of Camp 5 were occupied from the first of May to the middle of December; those of Camp 6 from June 1 to the latter part of August of the following year.
As late as the end of May General Greely reported that he could not get sufficient data on which to base housing recommendations. The first registration had shown that a little over a fourth of the applicants to the food stations were living at the same address when they were registered as on April 17, the day before the earthquake. In a few cases these people were no doubt housed in tents or shacks on the site of their burned homes. But most of them had not lost their homes or personal effects, though they had been affected by the disaster in other ways. They had lost their work, or had suffered some injury in health from the shock, or, merely demoralized by the general confusion and the abundance of free provisions, had assumed a mental attitude of dependence not really justified. Most of this last class, to be sure, did not survive the registration, but there were no doubt some who were not weeded out until after the canvass had been made. Sixteen per cent more are known to have been living in houses at the time of the registration, but as their addresses on April 17 were not given, it is impossible to know whether or not they had been driven out of their homes by the disaster.
TABLE 18.—HOUSING OF REGISTERED FAMILIES, BY CIVIL SECTIONS, MAY, 1906. NUMBERS
| Residence at time of registration | NUMBER OF FAMILIES HOUSED AS SPECIFIED IN CIVIL SECTIONS | Total | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| I | II | III | IV | V | VI | VII | ||
| Same as on April 17 | 856 | 225 | 572 | 1,105 | 197 | 424 | 1,955 | 5,334 |
| Tent or shack | 741 | 79 | 1,407 | 272 | 1,082 | 467 | 317 | 4,365 |
| A house different from that of April 17 | 640 | 294 | 669 | 924 | 681 | 945 | 2,168 | 6,321 |
| A house; uncertain whether the same as or different from that of April 17 | 336 | 191 | 329 | 257 | 215 | 999 | 804 | 3,131 |
| Total whose addresses in May were given | 2,573 | 789 | 2,977 | 2,558 | 2,175 | 2,835 | 5,244 | 19,151 |
| Addresses in May not given | 17 | 24 | 120 | 19 | 45 | 41 | 21 | 287 |
| Total registration | 2,590 | 813 | 3,097 | 2,577 | 2,220 | 2,876 | 5,265 | 19,438 |
TABLE 19.—HOUSING OF REGISTERED FAMILIES, BY CIVIL SECTIONS. PERCENTAGES, BASED ON THE TOTAL NUMBER OF FAMILIES WHOSE ADDRESSES IN MAY, 1906, WERE GIVEN
| Residence at time of registration | PER CENT OF FAMILIES HOUSED AS SPECIFIED IN CIVIL SECTIONS | Total | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| I | II | III | IV | V | VI | VII | ||
| Same as on April 17 | 33.3 | 28.5 | 19.2 | 43.2 | 9.1 | 15.0 | 37.3 | 27.9 |
| Tent or shack | 28.8 | 10.0 | 47.3 | 10.6 | 49.7 | 16.5 | 6.1 | 22.8 |
| A house different from that of April 17 | 24.9 | 37.3 | 22.5 | 36.1 | 31.3 | 33.3 | 41.3 | 33.0 |
| A house; uncertain whether the same as or different from that of April 17 | 13.0 | 24.2 | 11.0 | 10.1 | 9.9 | 35.2 | 15.3 | 16.3 |
| Total whose addresses in May were given | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 |