ESSEN.
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In general rents are .highest in the centre of the town, and lowest in the
Frohnhausen and Holsterhausen districts and in Altendorf, while the East
and North take an intermediate position. The difference between the floors is
usually very little—Is. or 2s. a month : generally the first floor is the dearest,
and the ground and second floors cost about ;he same. Taking rent in Berlin
as 100, the index number for rent in Essen is 62.
One very useful institution found in Essen is the system of municipal
house inspection, founded some years ago, and very successful ; in the three
years 1903-5 over 8,000 dwellings were visited, and action taken to secure
the remedying of defects. The principal of these were (a) inadequate
sanitary equipment, especially the inefficiency of closet accommodation, and
(5) overcrowding.
The latter evil is due to two facts. The first is the indifference of the
tenants themselves towards a proper standard of accommodation. This is in
part due, undoubtedly, to the height of the rents as compared with wages ;
but that this pressure of rents is not the sole cause of indifference appears
from the reports of the House Inspection. In the report for 1905, for example,
it is remarked that even in comparatively well-to-do and well-educated families
little regard is paid to adequate sleeping accommodation or the separation of the
sexes. The inspectors point out, as illustrating their contention that overcrowding
does not always arise fr un lack of means or lack of room space, that
out of 224 cases of offences against the bye-laws which impose a minimum
air-space in sleeping rooms of 353 cubic feet for each adult, 188 were remedied
by the simple device of adopting a larger room as the bedroom, or by making
an additional bedroom out of a seldom-used parlour.
The other potent cause of overcrowding is the development of the lodger
system. Not only does this take the form of the sub-letting of a room or an attic,
but often a bed or part of a bed is let to the lodger, who takes either breakfast or
all his meals with the family. The police regulations require the registration of
all bedrooms occupied by lodgers, and impose various restrictions, but these are
not always easy to enforce, especially in recent years, when there has been a
great and very rapid influx of single workmen, or workmen whose families have
been left behind, so that the temptation to the ordinary tenant to take such
lodgers has been very great. The usual charge for board and lodging is 11s. or
11s. Qd. per week. The evils which the system brings in its train are
recognised on all hands, and the authorities are doing their utmost to deal
with them.
There is one Building Society (“ Spar- und Bau-Genossenschaft ”) in
Essen, but its operations are not very extensive. At the commencement of
1905 it had 55 houses with 284 dwellings, of which 48 had two rooms,
1 78 three rooms, and 58 four rooms ; in 186 dwellings there were small bathrooms,
and in five houses there were common baths. These houses are of the ordinary
type, but the society is now erecting, on the open outskirts of the town, a colony
in which the houses are to be small, for the occupation pf only one or two families.
Reference has already been made to the fact that a very considerable
number of dwellings in Essen have been erected by employers. The most
important work in^this direction has been done by the Krupp firm, which in
1905 had 4,327 dwellings in eight colonies, in addition to a number of dwelling
houses scattered throughout the town. These colonies may be divided into two
groups, the one representing the early efforts of the firm to meet the need for
dwellings in the simplest and most severely practical manner ; and the other
dating from 1890, in which, as the firm’s report states, “ in addition to practical
considerations hygienic and aesthetic considerations were also borne in mind.”
In the Alfredshof colony the houses are usually small, sometimes for one family
only, but generally for two or three families, and only in a few cases for more :
each dwelling is absolutely separate and has its own cellar and attic drying-room.
Each house stands in its own small garden, and thus resembles a detached
cottage ; and uniformity of style is carefully avoided. The rents for three
rooms (the minimum) are about £10 10s. per annum, for four rooms (one
small) £12, and for five rooms £15 10s. : the rents include water, but the tenants
do the papering themselves. Gas is supplied at a cheap rate from the Krupp
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