Chicago, paid a lower wage than the white workman and more limited in opportunity, does pay a relatively higher rent. The negro real estate man is much fairer, generally speaking, than is supposed, and could means be found whereby he and the tenant could get together and come to an understanding on many things, each about the other, regarding which they are now deluded, the first step would have been taken to the improvement of the lot of the negro renter."
Twenty years ago fewer than fifty families of the colored race were home owners in Chicago. To-day they number thousands, their purchases ranging from $200 to $20,000, from tar paper shacks in the steel district to brownstone and graystone establishments with wealthy or well to do white neighbors. In most cases, where a colored man has investments of more than ordinary size, it is in large part in real estate. Realty investment and management seem to be an important field of operation among those colored people who acquire substance.
In the matter of home buying there is something radically abnormal about the situation of the colored people in Chicago. The last census computed 22.5 per cent of the homes occupied by colored citizens in the United States as owned by the occupants. In Illinois 23 per cent of the colored householders owned their premises. But in Chicago the survey of the School of Civics and Philanthropy in 1917 reported that in the south division only 4 per cent of the apartments and houses occupied by colored persons were owned by the occupants and on the west side only 8 per cent. In South Chicago and in the stockyards district, where the highest percentage of ownership was found, 18 per cent of the colored families owned their homes. So it is evident that the percentage
