The direct work of investigation in the field of housing reform,
carried on by the Pittsburgh Survey, has been intentionally limited to
the question of sanitary regulation. That was the first prime need to
be met. The work has been carried on under the supervision of Lawrence
Veiller, the foremost authority on housing reform in this country.
Mr. Veiller was the secretary of the New York State Tenement House
Commission in 1900, first deputy commissioner of the New York City
Tenement House Department, and is director of the Department for the
Improvement of Social Conditions of the New York Charity Organization
Society.
In illustrations and text, no attempt is made to present a review of
the development of model towns in the Pittsburgh District, or the
construction of single and two-family houses. These are matters which
will properly come before committees on building construction and town
planning of the new Pittsburgh Civic Improvement Commission.
Real estate dealers and builders have not been inactive in Pittsburgh;
but the situation is so serious as to demand the development of a
constructive public policy.
It demands such town planning and traction development as will open
up wider suburban areas and relieve congestion. It demands such
radical modification of the tax system, as will put a premium, as in
metropolitan Boston, on home building; rather than a premium, as in
Pittsburgh, on the speculative holding of unimproved land. Pittsburgh
might well be the first city to try out in America the co-operative
building scheme which has gained so much momentum in England, and by
which the shifting industrial worker owns not a house, but stock in a
housing company, which builds wholesale. Such a plan would admirably
supplement the operations of the realty companies and building and
loan associations in housing the growing industrial force of the steel
district, and would offer an opportunity for investment at five per
cent and the public good such as opens in no other direction to the man
of large means and large imagination who would leave his impress on the
Pittsburgh District.
--DIRECTOR PITTSBURGH SURVEY.
* * * * *
Such a condition could not go on indefinitely. The leaders in the
societies themselves insisted upon a better sensing of social
responsibility, which meant simply the better realization of one
principle, co-operation, the signpost to the second stage of growth.
This led not only to the manifold kinds of co-operation made possible
by the formation of an Associated Charities, but to a joining of forces
in other directions.
So the march of social reform goes on, with the charitable agencies of
the city more and more fulfilling their function of rightly estimating
causes and tendencies, of providing the fair chance to the dependent
and defenceless by intelligent, co-ordinated, family treatment, and
of educating the public towards the need of social legislation and
regeneration.
[Illustration: OLD PLANING MILL KNOWN AS TAMMANY HALL, TORN DOWN
THROUGH THE ACTIVITY OF THE BOARD OF HEALTH.
Twenty-five families were formerly housed here in 26 rooms.
Building to left continues to be occupied as tenement--10
families and 2 stores occupying 13 rooms. To the rear can
be seen remnant of the planing mill. Three families occupy
three rooms reached through the doors opening off the
gallery.]
[Illustration]