The Cost of Shelter by Ellen H. Richards
page 65 of 105 (61%)
page 65 of 105 (61%)
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in the newer apartment-houses, and two friends to share it may halve this
sum. A great need is for as good rooms to be furnished in the suburbs where more light and air may be had. The content of the country house costing $5000 to $10,000 will be approximately 50,000 to 70,000 cubic feet, or 10,000 for a person. The suburban block will furnish about 12,000 to 20,000 for the family, while the city apartment of six so-called rooms renting for from $400 to $500 a year shrinks to 6000 to 8000 cubic feet, giving only one tenth the air-space the country house affords, as well as far less outside air and sunshine. The best city tenements cost $1 a week for 600 cubic feet air-space. What wonder that the sanitarian is aghast at the prospect! According to the President of the English Sanitary Inspectors' Association it seems probable that if the nineteenth-century city continues to drain the country of its potentially intellectual class and to squeeze them into smaller and smaller quarters, it will dry up the reservoirs of strength in the population (address, Aug. 18, 1905). The houses of the Morris Building Co., illustrated in Chapter II, show what may be done. These houses rent for $35 to $45 a month with constant heat and hot water, so that the heavy work is reduced to a minimum; but the exigencies of family life are illustrated in the fact of the almost universal demand of the tenants for continuous heat and hot water night as well as day. The ordinary childless apartment house banks its fires at night. A supplementary apparatus would mean work by the tenants, however. This is a good example of the balance which must be struck in all new plans until they are tested. The change in what one gains under the name of shelter, what one pays rent |
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