On May 11, 1917, there were 1,318 egress complaints which had been referred by the Building Commissioner to the Law Department and were then pending. Of these only eighty-three had been disposed of prior to December 1, 1918. The details of one case are given in Appendix C.

How May Inspection be Improved?

After a building is completed the Building Department ceases to keep watch over it unless it is reported as dangerous or unless some impulse is given to increase the number or improve the condition of fire escapes and other means of egress. There is no need of periodic, systematic inspection by the Building Department of existing buildings except to determine how far they are in good repair. Building inspectors as a class have little training in sanitation and hygiene.

The committee is convinced that to maintain good living conditions in occupied multiple dwellings the responsibility for oversight and for enforcement of the housing laws should be placed in the Housing Division of the Health Department. Good housing conditions are largely a matter of sanitation and hygiene. Inspectors of the Health Department should be selected for their qualifications as sanitarians.

Who Shall be Responsible for Permits?

The Health Department should be made responsible for the examination and approval of plans for new dwellings and for alterations, in the matters of height, size of yards and courts, size of rooms and windows, ventilation of inner courts and vent shafts, ventilation and lighting of halls, height of ceilings, and watercloset accommodations. Probably the installation of plumbing should remain, for dwellings as for other buildings, under the supervision of the Building Department, but the Health Department should ascertain that the number of water-closets and sinks is not less than required by law. Defective plumbing when in use, as now, should be the concern of the Health Department. On the other hand, the Building Department should, as now, see that all dwellings are kept in safe condition and in good repair and that they have sufficient and reliable means of egress. All permits for

construction and alteration should be granted only after the Housing Division of the Health Department has approved plans and specifications covering lighting, ventilation and sanitation and after the Building Department has approved the same plans and specifications in all other matters covered by the building law. During work upon a building inspection should be by both departments and both should certify its compliance with law upon completion.

The legislation advocated will require the appointment of a considerable number of additional inspectors in the Housing Division of the Health Department, among whom the committee believes should be included qualified women, and appropriations for this department should be made accordingly.

What Part Should the Citizens Play?

The committee cannot avoid the conclusion that good housing in Boston, as elsewhere, implies not only adequacy of laws governing the construction and maintenance of dwellings, but also a very definite and cheerful acceptance of the obligations implied in these laws by both landlord and tenant. Indeed, adequate laws are but one step to satisfactory housing conditions. Open defiance of statutes governing the construction and maintenance of dwelling houses is less responsible for the unsightly and unhealthy conditions found than are indifference and neglect on the part of owners and tenants.

There seems reasonable ground to believe that many of the abuses found in and about dwelling houses would not exist if there were a sufficient corps of inspectors attached to the city departments responsible for the enforcement of the building and health laws.

The city should have an administrative force attached to both these departments sufficiently large to guarantee the rigid enforcement of the existing laws covering this particular object of the community life.

Good housing depends very much upon the interest taken in the matter by the citizens generally. It should be the aim of every citizen or group of citizens to understand and promote good housing. Without it there will be lacking many of the virtues essential to the inhabitants of a healthy, prosperous community.

RECOMMENDATION No. 3.— MORE LIGHT AND AIR IN CONGESTED DISTRICTS.

How Can These be Secured?

Pure air and sunlight are two of the most important factors in the maintenance of good health. Although conditions in congested districts can never be ideal they can at least be livable. The committee, in the legislation proposed, offers four methods by which more. light and air can be secured in such districts:

1. By further limiting the height of dwellings in proportion to the width of the street. The committee believes that the present permission to build multiple dwellings to a height of two and one half times the width of the street is detrimental. On streets of 30 feet or less in width, of which there are altogether too many in Boston, such a height precludes any possibility of light in the lower stories. The proposed law therefore cuts down the permitted height to 36 feet or to one and one half times the width of the street. Property owners who consider this limitation too great a hardship should use every means in their power to have the streets widened. Ultimately they will be the gainers.

2. By increasing the width of rear yards, beginning with a width of 15 feet instead of 12 as now required, and increasing that width with the height of the dwelling. It is important, also, that houses fronting on a broad street should not completely overshadow the lower houses in their rear, which front in the opposite direction on a much narrower street. A larger rear yard helps to remedy this danger.

3. By making it impossible to ventilate waterclosets on inner courts of less than 400 square feet in area. When vent shafts are used they are exclusively for water-closets and may never be used for bed rooms.

4. By enlarging the air-intakes essential to every vent shaft and inner court. When such intakes are too small they do not accomplish their purpose.

In one important particular this committee recommends a departure from prevailing practice. For multiple dwellings of considerable size the present minimum dimensions of inner courts are beyond criticism; but these dimensions (16 feet by 16 feet for courts not on the lot line) are inapplicable to narrow lots. There are said to be over three thousand lots of a frontage of 25 feet or less in the older sections of the city, the North End, the West End and the South End. There is difficulty in combining adjoining properties into new projects. Such mergers cannot be compelled or much encouraged by law. The committee seeks the best practicable conditions for multiple dwellings on old foundations either in new construction or in the alteration of existing single dwellings on narrow lots, and offers for such cases the benefit of inner courts 8 feet by 12 feet for three-story dwellings, 9 feet by 12 feet for four-story dwellings, 11 feet by 12 feet for fivestory dwellings and 13 feet by 13 feet for six-story dwellings. It requires that rooms opening upon such courts be in all cases portions of apartments that look out upon a street or yard and that no rooms shall open upon the same inner courts as bath rooms and water-closet compartments unless these courts have a minimum area of 400 square feet.

RECOMMENDATION NO. 4.- REMOVAL OF ALL DWELLINGS NO LONGER FIT FOR HABITATION.

Since permission to remove dwellings utterly unfit for human habitation was given the Health Department by an act of the Legislature in 1897 there has been an intermittent activity in this direction. For several years nothing has been done. An appropriation of $10,000 was granted to the department in 1918 for this purpose. Even this amount will accomplish much as the cost of the removal of a single four-story brick dwelling is not over $300. The committee believes that not less than this amount should be appropriated by the city every year and that the Health Department should constantly exercise its power. Only in this way can the cleaning-up process at the bottom of the housing scale be at all adequate. Every time a dwelling becomes hopelessly unfit it is a menace until it is out of the way so that something better may be put in its place.

RECOMMENDATION No. 5.- PUBLIC IMPROVEMENT OF THE NORTH END AS PROPOSED BY THE CITY PLANNING BOARD.

The City Planning Board has given especial attention to the North End district for the purpose of securing a restoration of all dead or congested areas. Careful studies have been made of every block in the district, and, in an important report recently completed, it has been shown how narrow streets may be eliminated, open areas created in the centers of blocks and a large amount of property be made profitable. The Committee on Housing believes that this improvement is of the very greatest importance. It will modernize a district that has always been popular for residence. It should be begun immediately and a portion of the general plan should be completed each year.

RECOMMENDATION NO. 6.- PUBLIC ASSISTANCE TOWARD BUILDING MUTIPLE DWELLINGS AT LOW RENTAL.

How Can Government Aid be Rendered?

In an exhaustive study of Government Aid to Home Owning and Housing of Working People in Foreign Countries (Bulletin, United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, No. 158) it is stated (page 9):

In the larger cities the question of cheap, and at the same time, sanitary dwellings for workingmen of small earnings, has in many cases become an acute one. The ordinary means of supply by the erection of houses by capitalists for investment have rarely proved adequate. So we find national, state, and local housing commissions, societies for the promotion of the erection of workmen's dwellings, and everywhere the conclusion that private initiative has proved inadequate to deal with the problem and that systematic government regulation, encouragement and financial aid must be given.

The conclusion, to which the study made by Commissioner Meeker in this bulletin leads, namely, that regulation is not of itself sufficient to solve the housing problem, but that regulation must be coupled with governmental encouragement and financial aid is, it is submitted, a necessary conclusion necessary conclusion which must be reached in any study of this problem.

In the belief that such aid is necessary and can be granted in agreement with the Constitution of Massachusetts, a practical method of meeting and solving the