As to the problem of new land which has not been developed intensively enough to pay for necessary improvements, the most conspicuous example is in Queens borough, outside the New York city fire limits. An illustration is given which shows the repeated rows of frame houses that have been erected beyond Jamaica. The outer sections of the city of Detroit have been developed in a similar manner. These houses are most of them uneconomic. It is only possible to build them because the financial set-up is misleading. They have been sold under the deceptive slogan, that it is always wise to "own your own home." Many who have bought houses of this type have learned to their regret that there are high discounts for original financing and high expenses for sales and promotion often running up to 43 cents on each dollar of original cost. On the maintenance side, also, there are high charges for rapid amortization and frequently unexpected assessments for improvements besides ordinary interest charges and taxes. Depre ciation also is rapid so that the sum total of annual costs for carry ing the houses is very great. As a result the inevitable move ment to crowd two and three families in houses intended for one has already commenced, although most of the houses are not more than five or six years old. The accompanying diagrams indi cate the proportionate shares of the average dollar spent for various representative types of housing, showing distribution to land, construction proper and promotion and finance.
The tendency to think of houses and of real estate as some thing quickly saleable has made it possible to offer so many basically uneconomic and ill-considered types of housing to the public. The rise in the value of land has been depended upon to pay for the mistakes that have been made in the design and production of homes.
In recent years there has been a new type of legislation affect ing housing. Of course prohibitory and minimum standard codes are still necessary, but enabling legislation has also been put into effect with the purpose of granting aids and encouragement for the production of better type homes. In England a direct cash subsidy has been extended to builders. In Germany the Govern ment has underwritten second mortgages at very low rates of interest. In Austria the Government itself has constructed homes. In America New York State has gone farthest, granting limitation of taxation and establishing a State board of housing with super visory powers.
project is an example of what large scale planning, construction and management can accomplish. A. J. Thomas was also the architect for the project of the Bayonne Housing Corporation in New Jersey. The lower value of the land made it possible to plan still more openly. The buildings cover only 46% of the lot. At Bayonne the space in the centre of the block is large enough to be a real recreation space. Thomas has been given great oppor tunities to prove his contention that light and air do pay. He was also architect for a whole block of garden apartments on Mott avenue as well as the great block of Dunbar apartments for negroes built by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. in Harlem, N.Y., not as a charity but as an investment. The great co-operative projects, one by the United Workers Cooperative and the other by the Amalgamated Garment Workers, have been built in the Bronx, N.Y., from plans which follow the principles laid down by Thomas. The architect of the former is Herman Jessor; of the latter Springsteen and Goldhammer.
Along somewhat different lines and strongly influenced by the English garden city has been the work of Clarence Stein and his associate ' Henry Wright. At Sunnyside Gardens, Long Island, N.Y., which they designed, with Frederick L. Ackerman, associate architect, the detached house, the double house, the row house and the apartment have been combined. The ground is used even less intensively than Thomas advocates, and far more has been done for recreation and for community life. Boyd and Holden have also contributed to the development of housing technique and the latter's associate Leonard Cox has been the leading force in the design of tall garden plan buildings in New York. These latter are noteworthy because they carry the two-room deep type of planning into the high building and demonstrate that it is already possible at current market prices to plan for light and air on land costing up to $30 a square foot.
Housing is, of course, closely related to industry, as has been attested by the genuine concern that industry has shown in some cases for proper housing of its workers. Many companies have made the mistake of being too paternal and that is the reason for the odium which the term "company housing" calls up. Nevertheless, on the physical side some really constructive work has been done. Noteworthy are the experiments of the U.S. Steel Corporation at Gary, Ind., of Cheney Brothers, South Manchester, Conn., and of the Newport News Shipbuilding Co. in Va. So far as the future is concerned probably the most con structive assistance that industry can give toward the proper housing of its workers is in the influence that it can exert through the judicious use of its funds in lowering the rate of financing charges for well-considered and well-designed housing projects. The Bayonne Housing Corporation derives its funds from local industries that have endorsed this policy.