The Pittsburgh Press (March 7, 1946)
I DARE SAY —
‘Wanted-to-rent’ ads
By Florence Fisher Parry
I read the “wanted-to-rent” ads in The Press, and I am haunted by them. I read them in the spirit of such self-flagellation that I find myself wondering if my own feelings about these homeless young families are not indeed shared by far, far more persons than the Housing Authority, in its self-righteousness, would have us believe.
Here in a row are three advertisements by physicians, ex-service men, begging for any kind of living quarters so they may practice their profession. Here is a list of veterans a whole column long, begging any place to live, some place to take their wives, their little babies! Here are 200 married Tech veterans alone, who can find no roof over their heads! Here is a local firm that will pay six months’ rent in advance if two rooms can be found for one of its employees, another where a whole year’s rent will be paid in advance for any kind of quarters.
Plainly, the housing situation has reached its all-time low; and those who are among the fortunates, who live in their own homes with room to spare, are under indictment for their indifference and selfishness.
But there is more than meets the eye in their refusal to take in some of these homeless young families and couples, and even single roomers. First of all, it has been impressed upon us all that it is unlawful to evict a tenant once you take him in. For six months you are obliged to keep him. A person or couple or family may prove to be wholly undesirable according to one’s own domes-tic standards; yet once you open your home to them, you are stuck with them.
Lost privacy
There are thousands of fine and public-spirited persons who are deterred from renting out space in their homes, because of this one thing. They have heard of all too many experiences of kind-hearted friends whose generosity and sacrifice have been abused by tenants.
Even supposing you do not take a risk; even supposing your tenants are most desirable in every way. Unless you have a professional rooming-house or boarding house or small housekeeping quarters to let, the moment you rent out a portion of your home – even a room or two – you have relinquished what to many is the most important of all human possessions: your privacy.
Your home loses an important part of its character; it is no longer yours completely.
That is what keeps so many people from sharing their homes; that is what accounts for so many persons clinging to a place that has grown too big and empty and “hard to keep up.” They dread giving up their privacy. How many persons do you know who have given up their homes and taken up apartment living, and who lament ever having done so! Never mind how convenient, how luxurious, how safe and sensible; just not being able to enter one’s own door; just having to go up in the elevator with others, pass strangers in the hall and foyer, does something to take away that incomparable sense of privacy one feels only in one’s own home.
Many ways of living
I have tried many ways of living. Hotel life is familiar to me, and it is the loneliest life imaginable! I have tried apartment living. It is communal, it holds no real sequestered dignity. In the years of the war, I gave up two rooms of my home to friends who sorely needed some place to stay; and I regret the action.
It was unfair to the members of my own family who, during the precious time they were with me, never felt the family privacy they were entitled to.
There is a tendency in our land to minimize and disregard all too many of the dignities and reticences and quiet nights of the people. Abolish building restrictions in fine neighborhood and residence sections! Tear down the big homes and erect apartments, tenements, tents if necessary! Let the people pay for the bungling ignorant perverse mistakes of Government management.