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Fort Wayne's Fifty HousesANALYSIS OF A PRE-FAB EXPERIMENTLoula D. Lasker
A city of 122,000, Fort Wayne is not unique in having a housing problem. It has its full share of slums. No running water in approximately 4 percent of its dwellings; no bathing facilities in about 20 percent; while 10 percent are without indoor sanitary facilities. Soon after its appointment last year Fort Wayne's Housing Authority, under the leadership of its chairman, William B. F. Hall, decided to tackle the local housing problem, at least to the extent of building fifty houses. At once the twin bugaboos of good housing—high land and high building costs—reared their ugly heads. Believe it or not they were both outwitted—or anyway sidestepped. Mr. Hall and the Federal Housing Administration (the organization which insures mortgages, not to be confused with the United States Housing Authority which lends money and provides subsidies for new dwellings for low income groups) put their heads together. A plan for getting land at a minimum cost, labor for nothing, and a loan to cover the necessary cash outlay was evolved. There were lots of Fort Wayners holding nonproductive slum property. Here the Authority saw its chance. Find a formula whereby it would become advantageous for said owners to give their land to the Authority for public housing and bugaboo No. 1 would be slain. In an attempt to do this the Housing Authority offered to "buy" slum real estate at $1 a lot—the owner retaining an option to repurchase it any time (for $150, $100, $75, $50 and $25 during the first five years and $1 thereafter). Until he recaptures his land, he need pay no taxes on his property. This plan offered landowners a way to carry their investments at the expense of the community, awaiting the day when, with a general economic upswing, their land would be worth a better price. The tax exemption cost the Authority nothing, as its projects are automatically tax free, true the city did not stand to lose a great deal either, for slum property rarely pays much in taxes. Offers came pouring in. Property for many times the contemplated fifty houses was available-little chance to clear slums, however, for only vacant land was put at the Authority's disposal. With the usual housing shortage, Fort Wayne property owners can still get a net income from veritable shacks. A method of no-cost land acquisition worked out, attention was turned to labor and material costs. The local Authority looked for a way to get someone else to foot its labor bill and succeeded. The city's WPA expenditures were big. How better utilize WPA workers than to build homes for the city's ill-housed ? This created another problem-the need for a house simple enough to be constructed by unskilled labor. With the help of Housing Economist Frank Watson, lent to Fort Wayne by the Federal Housing Administration, this problem too was solved. Formerly of the Purdue University Housing Laboratory, Mr. Watson evolved plans for a prefabricated house, based on his Purdue studies and those of the United States Forest Products Laboratory at Madison, Wis. [See "Packaged Houses," by C. Theodore Larson. Survey Graphic, July 1937.] A workshop was forthwith set up in Fort Wayne where, under proper supervision, unskilled workers constructed the different types and sizes of plywood panels needed for walls, doors, windows and roofs. Unskilled labor found no difficulty subsequently to do all the work necessary on the site. Skilled labor of course was engaged to install electricity and plumbing. Within a day after the parts were delivered the first house was standing. To find money for materials, supervision and incidental expenses was the final problem. A 4 1/2 percent loan of $45,000 ($900 per house) was secured from three local financial institutions, and subsequently insured by a FHA twenty-year amortized mortgage at an additional expense of 1/2 percent. The proposed weekly rents of $2.50 per house which the poorest tenant could afford (those finally selected were all on some form of relief) would amply service interest and amortization charges. As worked out by the Authority it is hoped they will be sufficient to cover operating costs and repairs as well. The houses were finally built—little white "oases" here and there in stretches of crumbling slums at, apparently, no undue financial burden on anyone. (However, because of their uniform, unusual appearance some people dubbed them chicken coops or pill boxes ) Fifty little houses in which fifty happy families were enjoying their first real homes. Had the great American genius at last solved one of America's greatest problems in a distinctly American way? AND SO THEY ALL LIVED HAPPILY EVER after would make a nice ending. But there is another side to the story. While recognizing that the Fort Wayne Housing Authority has made a real contribution by dramatizing the possibilities of prefabrication, by focusing attention on the needs of the lowest of the country's lowest economic third, housing experts are demanding that a little of the sunlight which the tenants are enjoying be used to illuminate the defects of the plan itself. For the Fort Wayne plan has far more than local significance. The amount of favorable nation-wide publicity it has received would so indicate. Housing authorities in other cities are wondering whether they shouldn't emulate it. John Public is likely to swallow it whole, good and bad alike. Some critics go so far as to feel that an experiment of this kind is in actuality harmful, inasmuch as it violates many of the fundamental principles of good housing that have taken years to get across. Which leads to a review of its defects: 1. The Fort Wayne-FHA plan ignores the principle that a housing project should be located in relation to an orderly city plan, and that even the temporary acceptance of a substitute idea may unduly retard the rehabilitation of neighborhoods or the improvement of blighted areas by diverting attention from this problem. 2. It fails to observe the principle that good housing implies that new housing should be part of a large scale planned "neighborhood," that a proper community environment is basic to any sound program of rehousing, a condition that cannot be achieved with the spotting of buildings on scattered tracts of land in slum areas. 3. It fails to recognize that to depend on a single group as tenants subjects the project itself to unnecessary financial risks. Since low incomes are always precarious incomes, whether the source is relief or industry, it is important to divide the risk among various groups. 4. It overlooks the danger that the supplying of a special type of accommodation (superior or inferior) to relief families may act as a boomerang to the recipients, segregating them unfavorably in the public mind. That others may be technically eligible to the project does not minimize this danger. 5. It disregards the adverse effect which the use of relief labor, rather than skilled labor paid at prevailing rates of wages, may have on economic recovery, inasmuch as the return of prosperity is to a large degree tied up with a revitalized building industry. 6. It shuts its eyes to the danger that the land assembly method adopted encourages land speculation, offering the owner an inducement to hold on to his property at the community's rather than his own expense, until it has an enhanced value of which he may reap the benefit. 7. It overlooks the fact that minimum standards officially approved may finally become accepted as maximum standards for the low income groups; that such standards do not always prove economical in the long run-either from a dollars and cents point of view or because of the harmful effect on the occupants. A uniform three-room house fails to meet the needs of different size families. A combined living room-dining room kitchen (which must probably serve as the parents' bedroom) is not as useful as two smaller rooms. Bedrooms of 88 square feet fall below what housing experts (as represented by the National Association of Housing Officials and the Committee on Hygiene of Housing of the American Public Health Association) regard as an acceptable minimum. It might be pointed out that the outlay of an extra few dollars to cover additional bedroom space, may result in lowering the per capita cost by making it possible to house an additional person in the same house. 8. It ignores the fact that the hidden subsidies make this project much more expensive than appears at first glance; that the funds actually used to produce it might have resulted in a better house. Cost for land, labor, architectural fees and overhead must be added to the $900 cash outlay per house. As a matter of fact the J 1 per lot was ultimately increased to 540 when charges for title searching, etc., were added. WPA labor charges cannot be ignored. Reliable estimates put the ultimate figure at nearer $2400 per house. AND SO ONE COULD GO ON INDICTING THIS project which perhaps has received more commendation and publicity than any single housing development in the country. Its shortcomings obviously make it a dangerous formula. While pro-Fort Wayners do not offer their plan as a permanent and comprehensive housing program, their disregard of the strides made in low cost housing standards during the last five years is serious. If this were the year of prosperity 1929, their experiment might have a strong case made for it, for then little constructive thought had been given to the importance of decently housing the lower income groups. But this past decade has seen a century of progress in ideas and performance on housing matters in the United States. Theories that sounded revolutionary ten years ago are today accepted housing practice. To go backward is deplorably shortsighted practice. This, despite the fact that the ardent Fort Wayner will reply to criticism (as have several from whom an expression of opinion was asked): "Yours is fine theory, but in the meanwhile we have built houses for our poorer people. We've seen these families before and after, and their present happiness and higher standard of living should convince anyone that in essence the Fort Wayne way is the right way." As a matter of fact, were it desirable, it is questionable whether the Fort Wayne-FHA plan could be repeated on a really large scale, or reproduced in every city. IT IS TRUE THAT IN THE EARLY DAYS OF public housing, under the PWA program, rents in projects were far above the reach of the lowest income groups. But in the last year the picture has greatly changed. Under the United States Housing Authority, costs have been materially lowered. In more than 150 cities dwelling units in projects planned by local authorities with federal aid with none of the defects and disadvantages suggested above, will be provided at monthly rents per room ranging from $2 to $5 in different localities—rents which the lowest income groups in those respective areas can afford. The new all time low cost was reached recently in Atlanta, when a loan contract was signed with the Housing Authority for a project to house 1207 families, each unit to cost $3079 and, with the help of the federal subsidy, to rent at an average of $2 per room monthly. That we are on the threshold of discovering great technical economies and improvement there seems to be no doubt; Fort Wayne has taken advantage of some of these already existing. But, regardless of their well-intentioned effort, prefabrication cannot yet be looked on as the White Hope of Housing; and the Fort Wayne experiment must not be allowed to evolve into a country-wide solution, or we may find when it is too late that it is as expensive to re-slum as to de-slum our cities. |