Cost of living in German towns

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Identifikator:: 866449027

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-93831

Document type:: Monograph

Title:: Cost of living in German towns

Place of publication:: London

Publisher:: Stat. Off.

Year of publication:: 1908

Scope:: 1 Online-Ressource (LXI, 548 Seiten)

Collection:: Economics Books

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KÖNIGSBERG. 281 It may be observed that the number of dwellings unoccupied at a given time is not an exact measure of the extent to which supply exceeds demand in the housing market at that time ; for among such dwellings there will always be a certain number which cannot really be said to be on the market. Thus of the 1,953 dwellings unoccupied in October, 1904, 49 were awaiting approval bv the police as being habitable, 28 had been condemned by the same authorities as not habitable, 46 were about to be demolished, and 51 were actually let but not yet tenanted, while 44 were combined with business premises and therefore available for a limited section only of the house-using public. After all these have been deducted from the 1,953 unoccupied dwellings of October, 1904, there still remain 1,735, and this figure may be regarded as constituting the real excess of supply over demand, and represents 4^ per cent, of all dwellings (unconnected with business premises) in Königsberg at that time. It cannot therefore be said that the scarcity of dwelling accommodation in Königsberg is any longer such as to cause concern, especially when it is observed that of the 1,735 dwellings which were untenanted in October, 1904, 1,314 or 76 per cent, were of the kind usually required by working-class families, inasmuch as they consisted of three rooms or less. On the other hand the rents charged for dwellings of this class are distinctly dear. As in all German cities where practically the whole population lives in flats, so in Königsberg, working-class tenements are to be found in the upper storeys of houses in almost all parts of this town. There are however, in Königsberg, certain quarters in many streets in which every house is occupied by working- class families from ground floor to attic. The distinctive working-class quarters are situated close to the fortifications on the south, east and west of the town, in what are known as the Haberberg, Sackheim and Laak districts. Of these the Haber berg district on the south is the largest. For the purpose of the present inquiry particulars have been obtained of the rents which were being paid at December 1st, 1905, for all dwellings of three rooms or less in this working-class district and in the corresponding district of Laak on the west of the town. The number of dwellings of this kind in the two districts was found to be 6,951, or about 70 per cent, of all. Of these 6,951 dwellings 4,619 consisted of three rooms, 2,008 of two rooms, and only 324 consisted of a single room ; from this it would seem that the usual working-class tenement in Königsberg consists of either two or three rooms, and that a three- roomed dwelling is by far the most common. This conclusion is supported by statements furnished by 213 working-class families of various ranges of weekly income, in reply to the question, “ Of how many rooms does your dwelling consist ? ” The replies showed the following results Number of Rooms in Dwelling-. Number of Families. One room Two rooms Three rooms Four rooms Total 3 80 125 5 213 Of the 2,008 two roomed dwellings covered by the present inquiry, 1,196, or 60 per cent., were fetching rents lying between the limits of £8 1 os. and £10 10s. per annum, which would correspond to a range of 3s. 4d. to 4s. per week. Among the two-roomed tenements visited for the purposes of this report a large number situated in the Haberberg quarter were being let at a rent of £9 18s. per annum or 3s. 10d. per week, thus falling within the limits stated above. The characteristic feature of these tenements, which are contained in continuous rows of three-storeyed stucco-fronted houses in the Thomasstrasse, is that all of them open off a common corridor lying parallel to the line of the street, so that the windows of the rooms on one side of it look into the street, and those on the other side into a back yard. Both rooms of a tenement are always either at the

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