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The Cost of Shelter by Ellen H. Richards
page 65 of 105 (61%)
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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