New York's New Slums

...This would remove the fears of mass influx into suburban communities and enable a better distribution of hard-pressed families which can pay for private housing but are prevented from doing so...

...It is clear that, with no vacancies available, relocation is largely a fiction...

...An expansion of the Federal program is essential, but it should be revised to emphasize changing needs...

...housing as part of a slum clearance movement, emphasizing slum clearance...

...The present occupant may be pressed to move to make room for the higher-paying newcomers, may be given a bonus to get out, or may do the subletting himself...

...Concurrently with this trend, apartments of four or five rooms are being broken up into one-room family quarters...

...On an inspection of a third of the apartments, 85 violations were counted...

...There are also small, cheap one-family houses which have now been converted to house ten families or more...

...The old claim, for example, that juvenile delinquency would disappear if we built new housing is clearly unfounded when the New York City Housing Authority evicts families with juvenile delinquents from its projects...

...Lodging houses for families, however, were rare, and the few that existed were intended for temporary accommodation...

...The new emphasis today should be on housing shortage and on the needs of special groups--the transient, the husband and wife with no children, the aged person living alone, the aged couple, single persons, working mothers, middle-aged families of two or more persons without children, and others...

...Large-scale rehabilitation is essential and will help improve some housing, but will not add to the housing supply and will, in fact, sharply raise existing rent levels...

...Since the needs are regional and the pressure on the city's population is increasing, however, building outside the city through state and Federal aid is essential...

...In short, I believe we have reached the point in New York City and other large cities where the housing problem has become part of a larger problem involving much more than housing...

...Puerto Rico's whole population of 2.25 million could be absorbed in America's expanding economy within a few years without causing any more strain than the absorption of like numbers of migrants in the past...

...But, as the demand for such houses spiraled, the single room increasingly became the residence of a whole family...

...The intense competition for one-room dwellings has caused a major exodus of families of the higher-income groups...

...A housing program should not be viewed as static and unchangeable...

...In the meantime, public housing for the lowest-income family group should be stepped up as far as possible on vacant land...

...A survey should simultaneously be made of all vacant and inadequately developed land to determine the proportion of the population that can be housed within the city limits...

...The slum core is being occupied increasingly by Negro and Puerto Rican families...

...Formerly, there was also more vacant laud within the city, and when that space was absorbed some of the fringe areas were incorporated into the central city...

...Despite occasional dips and rises in the two-way flow, the trend is continuing and present conditions on the island indicate a continuous outflow of population to the mainland at approximately the same level as in the last five years...

...District Attorney Silver charged that a grand-jury presentment he had drawn several years before had warned against the danger of such structures, but that officials had paid no attention to it...

...Institutional mortgage-lenders shunned most of these investments, and there emerged a special type of operator, skilled in running such properties, and a special type of mortgage operator, accustomed to discount such mortgages at from 25 to 40 per cent...

...Lodging of a boarder with a family was the practice for about 10 per cent of New York families in 1930...

...Builders then were putting up cold-water walk-ups--primitive in washing facilities and fire protection, but new, more spacious, built in volume at rents within the means of immigrant workers, and intended mainly as permanent quarters...

...The urban-renewal program needs a new approach...

...The Negro and the Puerto Rican now became competitors for the only housing available to them--the furnished room, the fictitious "hotel," and the subdivided flat...

...HSB in Sweden provides a model for such a venture...

...Since many of these people are transients, they require transient accommodations, but none have been built for them and the existing hotels are not within their means...

...Magistrate Solomon countered that Mrs...

...A study by the Rent Commission indicated that fewer than 13,000 out of some 190,000 Negro families, or less than 7 per cent, are eligible for FHA-insured housing at present costs--a number which can be taken care of by a relatively small number of FHA projects within the city and at its periphery...

...Former occupants of rooming houses and other smaller units are feeling the pressures of shortage, competition by the newer migrants, and rising rents...

...Public financing is essential, and the state and city program of low-interest loans is an important step forward...

...Many are petty operators who sublet a string of apartments at exorbitant rentals, paying surreptitious bonuses to the landlords for the privilege...

...The Coney Island fire was in this type of dwelling...

...A recent survey showed that more than half the migrants from Puerto Rico would like to return to the island if they could support their families there...

...The city's housing program is geared to 1930-40, not 1955-60, and needs to be re-examined and recast...

...Many owners can be expected to rehabilitate their buildings in addition to supplying heat...

...Other characteristics are the high rents and bonuses paid for apartments and the breakdown of family morale and family life...

...In one room there were four adults and five children...

...Perhaps the most serious by-product of such overcrowding is the breakdown of morale...

...Beginning in 1940 and accelerating thereafter, a migration of American citizens from Puerto Rico occurred, bringing some 500,000 here by 1953...

...We may draw a number of conclusions about New York City's changing environment: -New York City's slum areas are moving fast toward an irreducible slum core...

...here he presents some of his findings...

...The nature of this migration has been largely misunderstood...

...The city's relocation program needs a complete overhaul...

...The number of evictions due to private housing has increased, so that they now amount to 17 per cent of displacement and involve 2,000 families annually...

...Others are landlords who reap the profits without benefit of middlemen...

...The first essential is a current housing census of the city similar to those which the State Rent Commission has undertaken in Buffalo, Rochester, Schenectady and Albany...

...Repairs were rarely made, violations were not corrected, and rentals charged were what the traffic would bear...

...Overcrowding and absence of privacy have become the two most serious aspects of slum life today...

...Charles Abrams, long a leading authority on housing problems, has just completed more than a year as New York State Rent Administrator...

...Of the 519.000 rent-controlled dwellings in Manhattan, no less than 23 per cent are rooming houses...

...The available land supply for housing in the city is diminishing, and while there is still open land in Queens and Staten Island and considerable underdeveloped land that can be used for additional housing, political resistance plus absence of sound planning is sterilizing such remaining land against use for low-rental housing...

...There was also the frontier in the last century, which drew many from the city to build their own homes on the Western lands...

...The cooperative movement needs a new form of organization which can provide a large and responsible "mother cooperative" to build housing for smaller cooperatives both in the city and outside to case population pressures...

...teaching of English should be stepped up in Puerto Rico...

...The current housing program is geared to tenancy, though it is apparent that many low-income groups desire ownership of free-standing houses in more open areas...

...they were permanent quarters except for lodgers...

...This siluation has changed, too, and Nassau, Suffolk, the Jersey suburbs and Westchester are hardly ready to welcome the Negro or New York's poor, much less ask for incorporation into the metropolis...

...As of March 1953, 56,000 tenants were facing eviction in publicly-assisted projects during 1953, 1954 and 1955...

...For Upper Manhattan, it is 28 per cent...

...For the 500,000 new settlers were the residuum of a larger inflow and backflow to the island...

...The concept of the word "slum" as a description of a sordid building or neighborhood is obsolete...

...The situation finds no counterpart in the story of migrations here or abroad...

...314 of the tenants were relief clients, and the Welfare Department paid $65,000 to house 70 families in the structure...

...Finally, it should be recognized that we have reached the point where housing alone cannot meet the housing shortage...

...If the survey shows, as is possible, that the city is land-locked or land-poor, a regional approach to housing is inescapable...

...Still another trend has been the conversion of bungalows and rooms in summer resort areas, such as Coney Island and the Rockaways, into quarters for permanent living...

...The Commission has recommended such a census, prepared the desired information, and is prepared to tabulate and analyze the results...

...The United States Employment Service, which has preferred non-citizens to citizen Puerto Ricans in employment, should adopt a more enlightened policy...

...I do not say that resistance will not be encountered, but the story of migrations is not new to the country...

...This tells only a small part of the story, for no registrations are required for many conversions free of control and for houses rented for the first time...

...The metropolis is still dealing with housing in terms of prewar conditions, although the mass migration of Puerto Ricans has radically altered the situation New York's New Slums By Charles Abrams On September 21, 1955 at 7:00 a.m., a fire enveloped a dingy wooden four-story rooming house in Coney Island, killing five elderly people...

...Slum clearance is slowing up due to increasing inability to relocate the population to be displaced by clearance operations...

...Of the 590,000 registrations in Brooklyn (always known as the Borough of Homes), 52,000 are already in rooming houses...

...I can offer no single solution, since any program to meet the problem must consist of a series of proposals...

...In these changes we see the spread of a new phenomenon in the city--the transient slum and the growing con-version of the main residential areas into transient areas...

...The housing program should be re-studied and re-geared to the changing needs...

...New housing operations are providing little housing for such single persons, widowers, the aging, the large family, the working mother, and many other "non-average" families...

...More than 8,000 families are facing eviction from urban-renewal projects...

...This crop of houses in which the poorer portion of the population live today are a menace...

...Housing conditions have always changed, and housing programs have followed the changes, e.g., housing for recovery, emphasizing new building, aid to mortgage lenders and general pump-priming...

...The unwritten but effective restrictions against the city's Negro population are based largely on unfounded fear of inundation by the Negro minority...

...These are finding little or no housing available to them in either public or private projects...

...The human slakes for the individuals involved and the vast social and economic stakes for our cities are too great to be tackled piecemeal or to depend mainly on sporadic housing programs that ignore the essential elements responsible for the new situation...

...Those who settle here permanently are in a more desperate plight, for the housing shortage had reached famine proportions long before the start of the migration flow...

...This is evidenced not only by the large number of Spanish names in the Family Court and Youth Term but by the discontent among these families...

...A random sampling of registrations in the rent office shows innumerable units registered at $30 rentals which are sublet by tenants to bring $250 monthly or more...

...It is involved with the problems of obsolete boundaries, regional and interstate needs, suburban sprawl, migrations, fiscal difficulties, minority tensions, and the whole complex of urban and suburban life today...

...The headlines brought two score officials to the scene, and, before the charred bodies had been removed, a bitter exchange of charges and counter-charges took place at the scene of the tragedy...

...The author of articles for numerous magazines, his most recent book is Forbidden Neighbors...

...In the face of this situation, what can be proposed...

...The city's capable Deputy Housing Commissioner Bernice P. Rogers blamed Magistrate Charles Solomon for having fined the owners only $10 when they were sumoned before him a few days before to answer charges of violations...

...New York City, of course, has always been the haven for newcomers and immigrants, and at the height of migrations there was some crow ding in single rooms and apartments, but the situation today is far different from what it was in the last century...

...housing for war purposes and defense, emphasizing war and defense areas...

...Rogers's inspectors had not marked the complaint "hazardous" as he said was the practice in such cases...

...In this capacity, he has studied the housing needs of urban centers in the light of present-day conditions...

...Low-interest loans for low-income housing along the lines of the Connecticut plan should be considered...

...The frontier for Puerto Rican families is New York City, and there seems to be little prospect that the tide of migration will bead outward for a long time to come...

...Both groups have, therefore, competed for whatever housing was available, which has meant crowding into the homes of relatives, carving up more expensive apartments so as to share the rent, or moving into whatever other makeshift space could be found...

...With the Housing Authority's refusal, moreover, to take in criminals, juvenile delinquents, Communists and undesirables, the slum core into which these people are being herded must become the focus of increasing trouble...

...The main answer to the Puerto Rican migration is not curtailment, for by comparison no less than 2.7 million Negroes migrated from one state to another from 1940 to 1947...

...Rents for one room were up to $78 per month...

...Interest rates might, however, be flexible and mortgages sold when incomes permit charging the going interest rate...

...If the acrimony among the officials solved nothing, it did at least point up the continuing bewilderment about New York City's housing problem and the continuing tendency to highlight incidents as though they formed no part of the overall problem...

...Lodging in family quarters or in lodging houses generally provided cheap temporary shelter for casual or transient workers...

...From 75 to 80 per cent of Puerto Rican migrants came to New York City, some merely to work a short time and go back, some to stay on...

...The bulk of new housing is being planned for the "average" family, which is no longer the predominant family in the population...

...Though fires of this sort are no novelty in New York City, it received unusual coverage in the press because the fire occurred well before the winter season and fire deaths had not yet become routine news...

...Slum clearance which emphasizes slum demolition should be re-defined to encompass clearance of overcrowding, which can best be accomplished by emphasizing vacant land operations...

...They are inhabitated by families which do their cooking there: they are heated by portable burners and the fire risk is great...

...They are a fire menace, for they were not meant to house so many occupants, and they are heated by portable kerosene oil stoves, which number some 100,000 in the city...

...When industrialization and a housing shortage necessitated quarters for the migrating family before 1900, the tenements came into vogue...

...All urban-redevelopment subsidies should be conditioned on the simultaneous use of vacant land either in the city or outside so as to effect a net increase in accommodations provided by the redeveloper...

...The answer lies in helping the immigrants to sink firm roots within the city as well as throughout the country...

...They lack the accommodations, safeguards and services of the transient hotels and are unfit for family occupancy...

...These families are spreading out to adjoining areas, enlarging the core as immigration and demolition proceed...

...The building of new towns on the periphery of the city should be explored as part of any program...

...These should accrue largely to the tenant so as to cause as little increase in rent as possible consistent with the incomes of the occupants...

...One "hotel" was composed of six old-law tenements on West 27th Street where nearly 400 people were jammed three in a bed...

...In each case, there was tension and resistance...

...Fire Commissioner Edward F. Cavanaugh Jr., whose duty it is to check fire hazards as well as put out fires, announced "substantial evidence that the fire was incendiary," ordered a searching investigation by his full 40-man staff, and a diminutive 42-year-old eccentric woman was brought in, booked as a "vagrant" and grilled to near collapse before the Commissioner decided it might not be arson after all...

...In New York City, the Department of Welfare places thousands of families in such accommodations for the simple reason that there is nothing better available...

...The first important change took place after 1920, with the Negro population rising from several hundred thousand to 477,000 in 1940 and to more than 775,000 in 1950...

...While the state's program is an important step in the direction of aiding cooperatives, the formation of experienced cooperative groups cannot be encouraged without extensive public aid and initial sponsorship...

...An important impetus can be given to the cooperative movement by selling or leasing to them some of the Housing Authority's self-supporting housing projects...

...Such subsidies are contemplated under the cur-rent city bill, but they are not earmarked for the landlord or tenant...

...and housing for returning veterans...

...The statistics of the 1930s, in which slums were said to cause disease, juvenile delinquency, infant mortality, crime and premature mortality, are obsolete because they emphasized the physical condition of buildings rather than overcrowding...

...With a net immigration of Puerto Rican citizens ranging from 35,000 to 50,000 annually, migration and housing must be viewed as part of a single problem...

...When one compares the average annual output of 6,500-8,000 units of new housing by the Housing Authority with the needs of some 17,000 Puerto Rican families alone which annually migrate to the city, it is plain that the housing program cannot keep pace with the needs of the migrant, much less the low-income group...

...Rehabilitation within the city is about to receive an important stimulus through pending City Council legislation to compel installation of central heating...

...This calls for a revision of the state and Federal programs to encompass a more rational distribution of the city's population...

...By 1940, however, all but a small fraction of vacancies had already been absorbed in the cheaper dwellings...

...More breaking up of existing units, deterioration and substandardization of existing housing is inevitable...

...16 of them were hazardous...

...Between 1940 and June 1953, no less than 1.85 million left the island, while those who had returned numbered 1.4 million...

...Finally, there are illegal cellars, stores, lofts and other makeshifts that have been mustered into use as dwellings and rented at ransom figures to the home-hungry...

...The slum core is being broken up into smaller and smaller spaces, and as slum clearance, urban renewal and private demolition proceed it is receiving an increasing proportion of the city's low-income population...

...The city's housing program is geared to a policy of ownership of public housing in perpetuity, has become institutionalized through its policy of ousting tenants whose incomes exceed a prescribed maximum, and requires a complete review to achieve its aims...

...A true picture can come only through a comprehensive investigation by a Senate committee into the stale of our cities...

...Reformers of that era inveighed against the tenements and their further construction was prohibited after 1901, but the same reformers would consider them excellent by comparison with the overcrowded one-room slums of Harlem and Brooklyn today...

...Settlement to areas throughout the United States should be encouraged by new low-rate air routes, and leaders should be trained in Puerto Rico to help facilitate settlement on the mainland...

...Another by-product of the shortage has been the rise of fictitious "hotels...

...Settlement in areas outside of New York should include both men and women in order to foster family life...

...Mice, roaches, broken windows, peeling paint, broken plaster and strips of dilapidated furniture were the "fixtures...

...These are former rooming houses which call themselves hotels so as to come within the more lenient hotel regulations...

...New York City with its 8 million people has undergone vast changes in its social and physical characteristics in recent decades...

...A policy requiring relocation by the city is desirable, but it cannot meet the main problem until the overall supply of housing is increased to make dwellings available to the people to be relocated...

...Another room, in which the window-panes were plugged with cardboard and the ceiling and sink leaked, was occupied by a family with four children...

...This, however, will entail rent increases of from 60 to 100 per cent unless subsidies are granted...

...in almost every case, the immigrants overcame it...

...The single apartment is occupied by four or five families paying as much as five times the base rent...

...The pull-back to the island is too strong and the time it lakes to go hack and forth only six and a half hours, encouraging re-migration and impermanence...

...The Federal law allows the use of vacant land, but there are no vacant land operations in the city and few in the country as a whole...