Moving Day

Of the 9,700,000 families who rent urban homes in the U. S., about a third move every year. This week, as the illogically favorite moving day (Oct. 1) for the country's two largest cities (New York and Chicago) approached, thousands of them signed leases, hired vans, packed. Many moved to save money. Most of them found rental levels for the new season either 1) about the same as last year, or 2) definitely lower.

Reason for lower levels--despite growing defense prosperity--was the long-term trend of urban decentralization. A vague spectre to urban real-estate men for years, it became a reality with the 1940 Census figures. Since 1930, while suburbs gained population, most mother cities gained less or none at all (TIME, Sept. 30). Realistic realtors at last concluded that the big cities, relatively speaking, had passed their population peak.

Not all renters got the benefit of this trend. Only tangible growth in city vacancies (hence lower rents) was in the upper brackets--houses and apartments renting for $45 or $50 a month and more. In much-moving Manhattan, renters in that bracket found reductions averaging 2 1/2 to 5%. Biggest rap was taken by swank East Side apartments (seven rooms or over), where realtors found tenants beginning to economize by taking smaller units. Landlords, leery of giving tenants any weapon which might be used to beat down rents, did not talk, but last week the U. S. Census Bureau put New York City vacancies at 7.6% of all apartments (normal: 5%). Thoroughly alarmed at what Manhattan Realtor Robert H. Armstrong figures is a "25% increase in six years in available accommodations for tenants who can afford more than $50 per month," landlords and agents met to ponder methods of controlling speculative apartment builders.

But the lower-bracket two-thirds of New York's movers got no rent reductions. By the city's latest survey of $49-and-under rentals, vacancies were 2% less than the norm. Fighting rent increases and non-renewal notices in all parts of the city, the tough little City-Wide Tenants Council and its 22 tenant union leagues were hornet-mad. Formed in 1936 to promote better and cheaper housing, the Council has fraternal relations with militant tenants' unions in Great Britain and Philadelphia, is a constant source of trouble to landlords. Now is its busy season for negotiating, litigating and "striking."

In Pittsburgh, Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Baltimore, Columbus, Denver, St. Louis, Cleveland and Seattle, rents were definitely down. Despite California's 21.1% population gain in the past decade, San Francisco was hard hit, and better-apartment vacancies rose from 10 to a whopping 20%. A jittery Apartment House Owners Association frightened the city out of accepting a $2,500,000 United States Housing Authority grant for a slum-clearance project. In Detroit, Birmingham, Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, rents looked about the same as last year. In Chicago, Cincinnati, Atlanta, Omaha, they were a modest 1/2 to 2% up.

Urban landlords had another worry last week: taxes. Decentralization made this problem worse. Said Boston Realtor Carleton Hunneman last month: "We are in a vicious spiral. The worse financial difficulties of intown Boston become, the more values fall. This brings an increase in demolition of property with a shrinkage in taxable values. The less there is to tax, the higher the tax bills on what remains. The higher the taxes the greater the exodus from the city." What was true of Boston was true of many another U. S. city. According to the Real Estate Board of New York, reductions in assessments have been negligible, and Manhattan buildings now sell at 73.4% of assessed value, a steady decline from 84.7% in 1937.

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