struggling with the problem of upkeep in a property which has depreciated beyond the point where decent maintenance is possible, and, at the same time exacting higher rents—is management such as this likely to arouse charitable feelings? Under enlightened administration, nearly all the usual difficulties of managing tenement property disappear or become unimportant. The long experience of the City and Suburban Homes Company of New York City, and the results obtained in the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company's garden tenements, as well as in the Bayonne housing, are conclusive on this point. They prove that a big majority of the tenants respond to their environment, and create thus a powerful public opinion in favor of order. The few backward individuals soon come to obey public opinion, backed by the tactful reminder of the management that rents are much higher elsewhere. In the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company's housing the 12,000-name waiting list is significant in this connection.
Furthermore, the design of the garden apartment is an effective aid to good management. With its open plan, a stream of daylight is turned on every window, fire-escape and entrance, searching out the slightest infraction of the rules, or any slovenly housekeeping, holding them up to the public gaze and to the eye of the manager. There are no dark recesses in the buildings where filth can collect through the carelessness of either management or tenants. By good planning the untidy back yard and clothes lines for laundry are removed. In industrial housing high standards of architecture are essential to good management. And good management is essential to economy.
Rentals in the Bayonne housing
As a result of the economy of design, the rentals in the Bayonne Housing Corporation's apartments are $10.25 a room a month on the first, second and third floors, $9.75 a room a month for apartments on the fourth floor, and $9.00 a room on the fifth floor. These rentals include the bathrooms, and also, as explained above, steam heat, hot water and janitor service, worth at least $2 or $3 a room a month more.
This schedule of charges brings a modern four, five or six-room home within the means of the better paid wage-earner's family. The most that a wage-earner should be expected to pay in rent is from one-fifth to a quarter of his income, and before
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