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MUNICH.
Few working-class families go beyond three rooms and liardly ever without
taking lodgers, and even when three rooms are taken a bed is not infrequently
let to a single young man for several shillings a week. The housing census of
December 1, 1905, showed that lodgers or sub-tenants were taken in 23'6 per
cent, of all dwellings in the town (against 32'2 per cent, in 1900), and that the
lodgers and sub-tenants formed 9 6 per cent, of the entire population (against
15 5 per cent, in 1900). The lodger system is, indeed, one of the worst features
of the housing arrangements of Munich, and its moral effects are said to be
deplorable. It will be remembered, as a fact bearing on the housing question,
that the percentage of illegitimate births at Munich was in 1904 25*7 per cent,
and in 1905 27"2 per cent. Rents are calculated and as a rule are paid by
the month, and in some cases in advance. A formal written contract of
tenancy is not general. As in Nuremberg some of the brewery companies own
large numbers of houses for the sake of the licensed premises attached to them,
and many houses are also owned by speculators, who, however, are heavily
mortgaged, and have little personal interest in their properties.
Since there is an abundance of dwellings intended for people of small means
at Munich, private employers have had no need to provide houses for their
workers. Where the latter are employed in the suburbs they are always able to
obtain on the spot decent housing at about the same rents they would have to
pay in town, though it is common experience that workpeople prefer to live in
Munich and travel to and fro morning and night either by the outer lines of
tramway or by the suburban railway. The railway authorities issue tickets at
half price, and as the fares for local trains are very low, a workman can travel
several miles twice a day at a weekly cost of from bd. to Id. Several employers
bear this cost of conveyance where their workpeople prefer to live in town
instead of in the neighbourhood of the factory.
The State Railway Administration is an exception, for it not only lends
money at a low rate of interest to Building Societies formed of railway men,
but it has provided admirable housing accommodation for a considerable part of
the workpeople employed in the Central Workshop at Munich, as it has for other
railway workshops in Bavaria. The Munich dwellings are of three types,
according as they consist of one bedroom, kitchen, anteroom, and garden, rented
at £3 5s. per year ; two bedrooms, kitchen, two anterooms, and garden, rented
at £5 4s. per year ; and three bedrooms, kitchen, two anterooms, and garden,
rented at £6 10s. Since 1889 the Railway Administration has spent no less a
sum than £600,000 in the provision of dwellings for its employees in various parts
of the Kingdom, and it is intended to carry on this part of its settled “ policy of
social welfare ” with equal if not increased vigour in the future, and for this
purpose further sums have been set apart by the Government.
An ameliorative work of great value has also been done by the Association
for Improving the Housing Conditions in Munich, a benevolent organisation
whose members have subscribed a capital of some £30,000, upon which they
receive interest of 3^ per cent., and have further borrowed on mortgage about
£100,000, wherewith to build or buy eligible tenement property which can
be let to working people at moderate rents. The Society at present owns 460
dwellings, of which 303 form a self-contained colony in the Sendling district.
The dwellings contain for the most part two rooms, though a number of threeroom
tenements are also reserved for those who wish for them, and the rents vary
from 15s. to 22s. per month for two rooms, and from 23s. to 32s. per month for
three rooms ; a few single rooms are also let at from 10s. to 12s. per month.
These rents may not be much less than the rents usually paid for the same
number of rooms in private houses, but the dwellings are equal to the best within
the reach of Munich working people, and are far superior to the vast majority.
Not only are the buildings attractive in appearance, for an exceptional degree of
artistic taste has been shown in their design and execution, but the rooms and
their approaches are spacious, light, and cheerful, and are indeed quite up to the
standard of ordinary middle-class houses. The dwellings which form the
Sendling Colony have been built round a large open space, which serves as a
place of exercise and rest lor adults and as a playground for the children.
Balconies are the rule in these dwellings, and for washing purposes the tenants
have the use of special rooms in turn. The Society’s existing houses consist of
either four or live stories, but it proposes to erect a further block of dwellings
