“MAD VALUES."

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 5088, 14 February 1927, Page 2

“MAD VALUES."

NEW YORK FLAT RENTS. FANTASTIC AMOUNTS PAID. . Rent® for New York flats have reached an average figure that is fantastically exorbitant. During a recent visit Mr. Hamilton Fyfe, a noted English journalist, investigated conditions in the great American metropolis, and took careful note of the mad values ruling. “A friend of mine has just moved into a New York flat,,” he writes for an English paper, “it has three room's —living-room, small dining-room —with a tiny kitchen and two births. It is not in a fashionable district. My friend, who is a bachelor, pays Tor it £6OO a year. “Every time I revisit New York I find the cost of living fantastically higher. Th© amount of money required to exist in this city, even with a moderate standard of comfort, has risen so much in recent years that-, large numbers of people are 'forced to live in conditions which seem to m® intolerable. Let me explain what I mean. “I was taken one day to see another, dwelling in which another friend, with wife and child, has lately taken up his abode (he is a bank cashier). This is not called an apartment; it is called a “domestic unit.’ It is, iir fact, one room with several large cupboards or acovefj. Its present took it .at a rental of of £250 a y®ar, and thought themselves lucky. Before long, they say, it will cost £4o<h "NOt only are hot and cold water laid on ; a third tap gives you iced drinking water. Not only can the room be swept and the furniture freed from dust by electricity (with vacuum-cleaner) ; not only Can ironing be done with an electric iron, and water boiled in an electric kettle, ftnd breakfast cooked on an electric hotplate, but there is an electric tinopener. Considering how largely the inhabitants eat out of tins this is a necessary addition. “Here,” he continued, “i& our kitchenette.” It was really a cupboard. In a third alcove, was the bath; in a fourth of a folding table and folding chairs, which could be used for meals ; in the fifth, arrangements for hanging dresses and suits—verj’ few of them. It is quite impossible for "domestic unit” occupants to possess many clothes. Twenty years ago he could have rented 'a good-sized hou®e for the same money, and could have brought up a large family in it, as most New Yorkers did. Now he and his wife have to send their little boy to an infant school, where he is looked after all day, along, with other chidren of one or tworoomed homes. There are schools of this kind aD ; over the residential parts of the city.Son there wil be one attached to*\ every big home block. Already some' of these blocks have their own g® r * dens and playgrounds, t,heir own restaurants, their own common kitchens.