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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344 MANNHEIM. provide dormitories for single and for foreign workmen. At the other side of the town, in the Rheinau and Neckarau suburbs, houses have been built of late years in considerable numbers by the chemical and rubber works. Here even more than at Waldhof the paucity of private dwellings and the relatively high rents of those which existed induced, and in some cases compelled, the employers to incur large expenditure in this way. The rest of the Rheinau and Neckarau workpeople live in the villages out in the open country and to a smaller extent in the town. Even in the villages rents often run as high as 80s. a month (equal to 7 s. a week) for two or three rooms and a kitchen. One large Neckarau firm encourages its workpeople to acquire their own dwellings by advancing money without interest to the amount of £50 ; the rest they are expected to save. Of nearly 1,000 married men employed by this firm 16 per cent, own their own dwellings. These employers seldom look for a profitable return upon their building enterprises in the form of interest—one of the largest of them only receives If per cent, and is satisfied with that—but the collateral advantage of having near at hand a body of workpeople who are not so ready (perhaps, also, not so able) to change their employment as are the unattached workers resident in the town, is held to outweigh the monetary loss. The Administration of the Baden State Railways also provides a considerable number of its employees with dwellings ; the smaller officials as a rule live rent free, while workmen are expected to pay about 4&. a week. Altogether more than a thousand working-class households, representing five times that number of individuals, live in dwellings provided by private employers at a cost much less than ordinary tenancy would entail. Across the river at Ludwigshafen the Baden Aniline and Soda Company has likewise a considerable colony of working-men’s houses. For many years—indeed, ever since Mannheim began to rank with the great industrial towns—the lodger question has proved one of the most difficult factors in the housing problem, and has continuously engaged the attention of the authorities. Where a working-class household inhabits a tenement of two rooms and a kitchen, it is a very common practice to let one of the rooms having a separate entrance from the landing to either one or two lodgers. The amount paid varies according to the district and the character of the accommodation. From 3s. to 4g. a week for bed and morning coffee is a usual price where a room is let to two persons ; a lower figure denotes an inferior household, while as much as 6s. and 7s. 6d. is charged when the lodger has the sole use of a room. The usual price for lodging and full board, which is an exceptional arrange ment, is 10s. 6d. to 15s. per week. There is, however, a large class of poorly paid workpeople—outdoor labourers and others, many of them Italians—who are content with very simple and inexpensive housing. They congregate in tene ments which correspond somewhat to the “ model lodging-houses ” of English towns, and, like them, need to be duly registered ; they pay 2s. a week for a bed, sleep four or more in a room according to its dimensions, and cook their own food, which they bring home every day, on the common stove. Under the regulations of November 10, 1904, now in force, stringent control of lodging-houses is exercised by the Police Authority acting through the Bezirksamt. No person can let rooms for payment without first obtaining police sanction. On application for permission being made, the tenement is visited by “ controllers,” with a view to learning whether the rooms intended for lodgers comply with the regulations. The first requirement—and this is a peculiar merit of the Mannheim lodging regulations—is that the letting of a room to lodgers shall leave the members of the family themselves all the accommodation called for by considerations of health and morality, and where this condition is not complied with, sanction is at once refused. In particular, it is required that the number of rooms left over—the kitchen disregarded—shall allow of the separation of the sexes and of each member of the family above 12 years of age sleeping alone, though two children under 12 years may use one bed. The result of this regulation is that only in rare cases can more than one room be set apart for lodgers, and to that extent lodger-keeping as a systematic profession is dis couraged. As to the lodgers themselves, it is required that they shall sleep apart from the rest of the household, save in cases specially sanctioned by the police authority ; no room may be let to lodgers which can only be approached

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