Message of the Mayor, Transmitting Report of the Commission to Investigate Tenement-House Conditions

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Excerpt from Message of the Mayor, Transmitting Report of the Commission to Investigate Tenement-House Conditions: May 19, 1904The problem of the tenement house in the large city has been receiving increased attention during recent years, because it is generally recognized that many of the physi cal and moral evils incident to city life have their roots in bad housing conditions. While cities differ from each other in the menace which this problem Offers, it would be unsafe for any city to presume to be free from it. To say that Bos ton conditions are not as bad as those in other cities does not for a moment remedy the evils which can be found here as in all cities. Mr. Robert W. Deforest, the recent tenement house commissioner of New York City, has said that the impressive lesson which New York has to teach other cities more fortunately Situated than itself is to begin tenement regulation in time, and thus prevent any repetition of the ter rible evils which confront New York, and from which she can not now altogether escape. There is no difficulty and no hardship in preventing unsanitary tenements from being built. There is every difficulty, and in the minds of some people there is much hardship, in changing them, after they have once been wrongly built.Your Commission has found upon investigation that, not withstanding the efficient work of the Health Department, there are many conditions in existing tenement houses which need further remedy. An examination of more than five thousand reports of separate tenement houses made by the Health Department inspectors during the past three years reveals better than any independent investigation your Com mission could have made the conditions prevailing in Boston tenement houses when these reports were made. Such por tions of the reports as are most significant have been trans ferred by the Statistics Department to separate cards, and these cards have been arranged by wards and carefully tabulated. The results of this work are given in Appendix A.With reference to the construction of new tenement houses, your Commission finds that the present laws with regard to fireproof construction make the building, within the fire limits, Of tenement houses in which low rents can be asked quite impracticable. Such construction has largely ceased. The statistics Of building in Boston during 1903 show that only one hundred and eight houses for three or more families were constructed. Of these eighty-eight were for three families alone, and are not at present classed as tene ment houses. Sixteen were for three families above a store, one for four families above a store, one for five families with out a store, one for six families above a store, and one, a costly apartment house, for twenty-three families. In 1903, therefore, only nineteen tenement houses were constructed, affording apartments at moderate rentals. The large increase in the number of three-family houses outside the fire limits indicates the lack of needed brick buildings within those limits. The conclusion that the building of good, low-priced tenement houses needs to be encouraged would seem to be justified.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.