New York’s House Famine.

Progress, Volume XVI, Issue 5, 1 January 1921, Page 113

New York’s House Famine.

The fact that the United States emerged richer from the war than she was when it began has not prevented her from suffering from many of the problems that plague other parts of the world. She has a housing question almost as acute as London’s. In some ways it is even more acute. New York, with a population of over 6,000,000, is estimated to lack quarters for something like 500,000. The shortage has been accompanied by the grossest sort of profiteering, facilitated by yearly leases. The plight of the miserable homeseeker in the great flat districts, whose gaunt streets gridiron the upper part of New York, has been accentuated by threats of strikes by the drivers of moving vans, by plumbers, painters, and others. His regrets for the good old days of a few years ago, when there were 50,000 too many flats in the town, and a month’s free occupation wers the rule, are the stock-in-trade of the comic papers. The price and scarcity of wood and steel have been a major factor in the problem. Labour troubles come next, and then, perhaps, the restriction of credit in the interests of deflation.