Model Tenement, Model Farms

Model Tenement, Model Farms

Dark, filthy, insanitary city stink-holes were one of President Hoover's pet aversions. During his administration the R. F. C. voted $1,500,000,000 for loans to 'limited-dividend housing corporations for the building of light, airy modern apartments. Slum clearance is also dear to the heart of President Roosevelt. When he set up the Public Works Administration under Secretary Ickes, a part of its funds was to be used for city housing. To date $46,219,958 has been allotted for that purpose. But bankers with delinquent mortgages and landlords with vacant property have doggedly opposed slum clearance. Last week the Public Works Administration, convinced that it could not "depend upon private enterprise or limited dividend corporations to initiate slum clearance," set up an emergency housing corporation of its own.

Public Works Emergency Housing Corp. has broad powers to "construct, re construct, alter and repair" apartments and houses, to lay out, build and maintain roads, parks, playgrounds, sewers, bridges, walls. For the present its policy will be not to compete with private building projects but to supplement them with loans, and, eventually, to turn its activities over to state, county or municipal housing authorities. The corporation's immediate objective is the acquisition of low-cost land "by private contract if possible, otherwise by eminent domain, which power is derived from the National Recovery Act." Unofficial estimates placed the corporation's initial fund at $200,000,000.

Coincident with the slum-clearance plan but not actually related to it are the "subsistence farms" for which the Interior Department has a $25,000,000 appropriation. The purpose of this project is to move families from city slums to small tracts of land where they can live cheaply and comfortably, raise chickens and vegetables. The first locality selected was Morgantown, W. Va., the second Dayton. Dayton had already evolved a similar scheme to relieve its pressing unemploy ment problem, had set up social agencies to teach destitute families to bake bread, can fruit, repair shoes, make furniture.

Leader in this movement was Dr. Elizabeth H. Nutting, 40, educational director of Dayton's Council of Social Agencies. Spry, capable, intelligent Dr. Nutting devoted herself to religious education of the young after graduating from Iowa University. She took a Doctor's degree at Boston University, taught ethics at Boston before going to Dayton five years ago. She organized and operated the self-help units, got 4,000 jobless to enroll. Last winter Economist Ralph Borsodi, who had set up a private subsistence farm at Suffern, N. Y. when he lost his money in the depression of 1921. went to Dayton, suggested a back-to-the-farm movement for the unemployed. Dayton's response was immediate. Under Dr. Nutting's direction a Homestead Unit Committee was formed, a 160-acre farm acquired. From the Department of Interior Dayton got a $50,000 loan. Homesteaders will be permitted to build their own homes along lines laid down by Architect Ernest Flagg, will be loaned money at low rates of interest to be repaid out of earnings from employment in the city or from trades and crafts in the home.

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