| No. of rooms. | Predominant Weekly Rents. | Ratio of German to English (100) | Ratio of French to English (100) | |
| England. | Germany. | |||
| 2 rooms | 3/– to 3/6 | 2/8 to 3/6 | 95 | 79 |
| 3 rooms | 3/9 to 4/6 | 3/6 to 4/9 | 100 | 86 |
| 4 rooms | 4/6 to 5/6 | 4/3 to 6/- | 102 | 78 |
If the mean of the English and German figures be taken it shows a very slight difference in favour of Germany; the mean weekly rent per room being 1s. 5d. in England and 1s. 434d. in Germany. But in England rent usually includes local taxation (rates) whereas in Germany it does not; if this be added German rents are to English as 123 to 100, or nearly one-fourth more.
The statistics given above indicate a wide range of variation in the conditions prevailing in different towns in Germany; and that holds good with regard to improvements. The administration of the laws relating to public health and housing is in the hands of the local authorities. The public health service is generally efficient and sometimes very good. Increasing attention has been paid in recent years to the sanitary inspection of houses and in some towns it is now thorough and systematic, but active efforts to deal with old and insanitary quarters en masse are isolated and exceptional. Hamburg is an instance; scared by the visitation of cholera in 1892 the authorities put in hand an extensive improvement scheme on the English plan at a cost of half a million sterling. But demolition is exceptional; slums are usually subjected to supervision and are not allowed to be in a state of dilapidation, and sometimes, as at Mannheim, notices are served to abate overcrowding. In Munich a policy of gradually buying up insanitary houses has been adopted. But improvement has principally been promoted by new building and the reduction of the population in old insanitary quarters, to which cheap locomotive facilities have greatly contributed. The great bulk of urban Germany is new, and the most valuable contribution made by it to the housing question is the more effective control of new building and particularly the principle of town-planning, coupled with the purchase of neighbouring ground with a view to future extension. This policy is comparatively recent and still very partially applied, but it is now rapidly extending. A general act providing for the planning of streets was passed in Prussia in 1875 and still forms the basis of building legislation; but as noted above no effective by-laws were adopted even in Berlin until after 1887, and consequently a very faulty style of building was adopted, especially in large blocks which conceal grave defects behind an imposing exterior. The Saxon towns have been conspicuously successful in regard to housing. Leipzig stands alone among German towns in having 83.4% of its population living in dwellings of 4 rooms and upwards. Yet it is a great commercial city, the fifth in the empire, with a population of upwards of half a million. It also comes low on the rent table, having an index number little more than half that of Berlin. All the Saxon towns are low, Chemnitz and Zwickau particularly so, and the position of Dresden, being a capital, is remarkable. More than two-thirds of the population live in dwellings of 4 rooms or more, and the rent index number is only 54. In Saxony a general Building Act, especially providing for town planning, was passed in 1900; and the Grand Duchy of Hesse, which alone among the German states has a government Housing Department, adopted a Housing of the Working Classes Act in 1902. Other states have followed or are following and the air is full of movement. The distinctive features of urban housing reform in Germany are (1) the systematic planning of extensions, (2) purchase of ground by municipalities, (3) letting or sale of municipal land for building under prescribed conditions. Many of the great towns, including Berlin, Munich, Dresden, Leipzig, Cologne, Frankfort and Düsseldorf, are owners of land to a variable but sometimes large extent. This policy seems to have been originally adopted on economic grounds and those municipalities which bought or otherwise came into possession of town land at an early date derive a substantial revenue from it now, besides being in a position to promote housing improvement. There is comparatively little municipal building, and that as a rule only or principally for municipal servants, as at Düsseldorf, Mannheim and Nuremberg; but there seems to be a tendency to venture further in this direction and some towns have built houses for letting. The municipalities generally sell or let their land, and the building agencies which enjoy most official favour are the societies “of public utility”; they are encouraged in every way and have greatly developed, particularly in the Rhine province. Some are co-operative, others semi-philanthropic in that they aim at building good houses and limit their profits. In 1901 the Prussian Government issued an order urging municipalities to support these societies by remitting the cost of constructing streets and sewers, placing the assistance of building officials at their disposal, taking their shares, lending them money and becoming security for them. A great deal of public money has been advanced to building societies, and one very important source of supply has been developed, since the Old Age and Infirmity Insurance Act of 1889, in the National Insurance Funds which invest their surplus capital in this way. Down to 1906 the Boards of insurance had lent £8,650,000 to societies for building; the Imperial Government had lent £1,250,000, the Prussian Government £1,825,000, and the other states further large sums in addition to the municipalities. Money lent by the state is usually limited to building houses for state employees and Insurance Boards lend on condition that the houses are let to persons who come under the insurance laws. The development of building societies has been promoted by the formation of general building associations of which the earliest was established in Düsseldorf in 1897 for the Rhine provinces; under its influence one-fifth of the new housing provided in 1901 was erected by the societies. The example was followed at Frankfort, Münster and Wiesbaden. Housing by employers has also been carried out on a large scale in Germany. States and municipalities have to some extent built houses as employers, the former chiefly for railwaymen, besides lending money to societies for the purpose; but most housing of this kind has been done by private employers. Krupps, who had built 4274 dwellings housing nearly 27,000 persons down to 1901, are the most famous example; but they are only one among many. In Rhineland and Westphalia employers had in 1902 provided 22,269 houses containing 62,539 dwellings at a cost of £10,500,000; more than half the families so housed belonged to the mining industry, the rest to various manufactures. These two provinces, in which industrial development has been extremely rapid, are exceptional; but housing by employers is not confined to them. At Mannheim for instance over 1000 working-class households have been so provided. At Nuremberg the Siemens Schuckert Company have encouraged an interesting system of collective building among their employees, by which 722 dwellings have been provided.
Holland.—In 1901 a Public Health and a Housing Act were passed, and these two embody most of the features of housing reform adopted in other countries. The first provides for a general sanitary service under the Ministry of the Interior. The second ordains that local authorities shall frame by-laws for building and for the maintenance and proper use of dwellings; that they shall inspect existing dwellings, order improvements or repairs or demolition; empowers them to take land compulsorily for the purposes of the act, to prohibit building or rebuilding on sites reserved for public purposes and to make grants or loans to societies or companies operating exclusively for the improvement of working-class dwellings. If they fail to make by-laws the provincial authorities may take action. Land buying with a view to extensions has been adopted by a number of municipalities including Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht and other important towns, and the practice is increasing. Amsterdam has also begun the systematic planning of extensions. There has been a little municipal building in some small places, but it is on an insignificant scale; the tendency is rather to favour societies of public utility as in France, Germany and Belgium. The new laws are too recent to have had much effect and housing reform is as yet in an early stage. Rents are high in the large towns, namely, 1 room 1s. 8d. to 3s.; 2 rooms 2s. 6d. to 5s.; 3 rooms 3s. 6d. to 6s; 4 rooms 4s. 2d. to 7s.
Italy.—A Housing of the Working Classes Act was passed in 1903, to promote the improvement and provision of workmen’s dwellings. Municipalities have the power to purchase land compulsorily for housing purposes and also to build workmen’s dwellings. A few towns, of which Milan is one, have done so. There are building regulations relating to the area and height of rooms and the thickness of walls. The antiquity of the Italian towns and the great quantity of old and insanitary building make housing improvement a very difficult matter. La Società Umanitaria, a benevolent trust founded by Prosper Loria of Milan in 1902, has taken up this subject among others and has built two model tenements, housing 2000 persons.
United States.—Interest in the housing question in the United States is confined to a few of the largest cities and can only be said to be acute in New York, though there have been investigations by commissions elsewhere and Miss Octavia Hill’s work in London has found admirers and imitators in Philadelphia and Boston as well as in New York. The evils of housing in New York have been the subject of much sensational writing which has elevated them to the position of a world-wide scandal. It is not necessary to accept all the allegations made in order to see that several circumstances have combined to produce an exceptional state of things in this great city. The limited space—the island or peninsula of Manhattan—in which central New York is built has compelled the erection of large tenement blocks, otherwise rare in American towns; the incessant inrush of immigrants from the poorest parts of Europe has filled these tenements with immense numbers of persons of many nationalities accustomed to a low standard of living; the generally backward state of public sanitation in America, and the absence or evasion of regulations and supervision, have permitted the erection of bad dwellings, their deterioration into worse, and their misuse by excessive overcrowding. Other large cities in which bad housing conditions are known to exist are Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Pittsburg, Jersey City. There are doubtless many others, but bad housing conditions are not so general in the United States as in Europe. Outside the very large cities there is more space, more light and air, less crowding together, less darkness, dirt and dilapidation. Large houses, occupied by two or perhaps three
