IX
NEGROES AND RISING RENTS
One of the best known club women in Chicago sold an apartment house on Wabash avenue last month. It cost her $26,000. She sold it for $14,000. Her agent advised her to make the sale because, as he said, the colored people were coming into the neighborhood and the property surely was going to take a slump.
That is Chapter I of the little story. Chapter II opens with the rent of each apartment taking a jump from $35 to $50 in this identical apartment house that had apparently taken such a drop in value in the open market. The fact is that it wasn't an open market. It was a panicky market. Sold openly, so that all prospective buyers might have had opportunity to bid, the place would have brought a higher price than was originally paid for it.
In two other instances in this same neighborhood properties at one time worth $15,000 dropped to $8,000 and $6,000, respectively, in a market so managed that there was no competitive bidding. The sellers were filled with panic. Then the rents took a high jump after the sales were made.
There seem to be certain preposterous axioms of real estate exchange governing this district and no others in Chicago. These axioms might be stated thus: (1) Sell at a loss and the rent goes higher, and (2) the larger the number of colored persons ready to pay higher rentals, the lower the realty values slump.
To quote a paragraph from the housing survey of the school of civics and philanthropy:
"It is a matter of common knowledge that house after house, flat after flat, whether under white or black agents, comes to the negro at an increased rental. The only available argument, it would seem, which will ever dispel the public impressions is for instances to become just as numerous of charge downward as they now are of charge upward. A negro woman, recent purchaser of a modern six flat building on the south side, informed the investigator that she had been importuned by numerous white agents and by two negro dealers, one of whom she named, to allow them to rent her flat for her at a substantial increase above the rent she is now receiving, acting as her own agent."
The report says further: "Counter-charges are made against the negro tenant by dealers of both races." It considers these charges in extensive detail, and then declares:
"It is established that, despite the low rents, which are immaterial in the light of circumstances, the general housing condition of negroes in the area lying between State street and the railroad tracks, stretching for several blocks north and south of 27th street, is reprehensible, a menace to health and constitutes kindling wood sufiicient to keep Chicago in constant danger of disastrous conflagration.
"Whatever may be the contributing causes, demand and supply, overbidding for coveted places on the part of tenants, inconspicuousness of the negro as an economic factor, guaranteed rentals or what not, the negro in Chicago, paid a lower wage than the white workman and more limited in opportunity, does pay a relatively higher rent. The negro real estate man is much fairer, generally speaking, than is supposed, and could means be found whereby he and the tenant could get together and come to an understanding on many things, each about the other, regarding which they are now deluded, the first step would have been taken to the improvement of the lot of the negro renter."
Twenty years ago fewer than fifty families of the colored race were home owners in Chicago. To-day they number thousands, their purchases ranging from $200 to $20,000, from tar paper shacks in the steel district to brownstone and graystone establishments with wealthy or well to do white neighbors. In most cases, where a colored man has investments of more than ordinary size, it is in large part in real estate. Realty investment and management seem to be an important field of operation among those colored people who acquire substance.
In the matter of home buying there is something radically abnormal about the situation of the colored people in Chicago. The last census computed 22.5 per cent of the homes occupied by colored citizens in the United States as owned by the occupants. In Illinois 23 per cent of the colored householders owned their premises. But in Chicago the survey of the School of Civics and Philanthropy in 1917 reported that in the south division only 4 per cent of the apartments and houses occupied by colored persons were owned by the occupants and on the west side only 8 per cent. In South Chicago and in the stockyards district, where the highest percentage of ownership was found, 18 per cent of the colored families owned their homes. So it is evident that the percentage of home owners in the district around 35th and State streets is desperately low as compared with other Chicago districts and as compared with the country at large.
It is easy to understand how the doubling of population during the late war made a live real estate situation. Not only was it difficult for the newcomers to buy homes, if they so desired, but it was hard at times for them even to get a place to sleep. The Urban league canvassed real estate dealers one day and found 664 colored applicants for houses on that day and only fifty supplied. The demands for quarters, the higher rentals paid by colored people and other factors were responsible for thirty-six new localities being opened up within three months, these localities having formerly been exclusively white. This increase in rents was from 5 to 30 per cent, and in a few cases 50 per cent.
"To-day we are beginning to realize that to become a good citizen, it is necessary to own a home, and that those who are renting cannot be considered other than floaters," is the comment of Jesse Binga, banker, the oldest established colored real estate dealer in Chicago.
When Binga bought one corner on South State street it was valued at $300 a front foot. It is now worth $500 a front foot. Six saloons did a fast business in that neighborhood when he entered there, and it was said of it, "You could get anything you wanted, from a footrace to a murder." Now it is a quiet, ordinary residence corner, and in behavior and cleanliness it ranks as one of the best in Chicago.
Though there are 249 building and loan associations in Chicago, there was none for the colored race until the Pyramid Building and Loan association, financed and officered by colored men, came into existence this year. There have been 690 shares sold to 105 persons.
Housing surveys of colored residence districts, varying in scope and purposes, are being conducted by the Cook county real estate board and the city public welfare department. One of the best publications on this subject is a pamphlet by Lieut. Charles S. Duke, a colored man, a Harvard graduate, and an engineer in the bridge division of the public works department at the city hall. It was published last April and it summarizes proposals for immediate action under two heads.
First are "things that Chicago owes her colored citizens," which are stated as follows:
1. The privilege of borrowing money easily upon real estate occupied by colored citizens living on the south side, and in the same amounts as can be borrowed upon property located in other parts of the city.
2. Better attention in the matter of repairs and upkeep of premises occupied by colored tenants.
3. Making an end of the neglect of neighborhoods occupied principally by colored people.
4. Abandonment of all attempts at racial segregation.
5. Prohibition, as far as possible, of the commercializing of race prejudice in real estate matters.
6. Recovery from hysteria incident to the advent of the first colored neighbors.
7. Fewer indignation meetings and more constructive planning.
8. Better school houses and more modern equipment in schools in districts where colored people live in large numbers.
9. More playgrounds and recreational centers on the south side.
10. A beautiful branch library in the center of the colored district.
As a corollary are presented these "things that colored citizens owe Chicago":
1. Better care of premises occupied by them, either as tenants or as landlords.
2. Formation of improvement clubs for the beautification of the neighborhoods in which they may live.
3. Practice of thrift and economy in the spending of income.
4. Keeping the expenditures within the income.
5. The buying of beautiful, sanitary homes.
6. Spending less money for amusements and expensive clothing.
7. Checkmating of the real estate broker who makes it his business to capitalize race prejudice in his dealings.
8. Reduction of the lodger evil.
9. Ending of the practice of taking on real estate obligations beyond the purchaser's means.
10. A continual demand for all the civic benefits that a beautiful and progressive city like Chicago can confer upon its citizens.