PEOPLE'S HOUSES. - Popular houses are civil buildings, urban or rural, intended for the housing of families of modest condition, who live on a fixed wage or a low income.
Historically the popular house is of recent origin, although, in a certain sense, the Roman "insula" may be considered its first type: a multi-story building intended for rental, composed of undifferentiated rooms served by corridors and steep stairs. In the 16th century some sporadic examples are found; but only in the 19th century does the true popular house appear, as a consequence of the overcrowding of the working population due to industrial development.
In London in 1814 societies were founded for the construction of popular houses for workers and for employees in the suburbs of the city. In Turin in 1849 the municipal council proposed the construction of popular houses and in 1853 approved the direct participation of the municipality in the enterprise. In 1850 societies and cooperatives were formed in Verviers, Mulhouse, Saarbrücken, and Essen. In the United States one recalls the Improved Dwellings Association for popular housing in New York and Philadelphia, and in Italy the agreement of the municipality of La Spezia in 1885 for the erection of a workers' district. In this flourishing of initiatives, industry is not the last and takes a resolute interest in the housing of its employees.
Legislation follows private initiative and in Italy, inspired by the experience of Belgium, the first organic law on workers' popular houses was approved in 1903, followed by very numerous laws and regulations.
After the first experiments and together with the first workers' social assertions, the problem of popular housing leaves the strictly technical and economic field; at first confusedly and then with greater authority the concept makes its way that it should not be an object of speculation, until gradually reaching the boldest modern thesis that it should be understood as a service accessible to all, and in the first place to the least well-off, just like school, transport, mail, etc.
At the same time the concept is affirmed of access to ownership as well as to rental, by which it becomes possible for anyone to become the owner of a dwelling suited to his family, with his own means alone, over a certain number of years, by virtue of saving and with the aid of economic provisions, such as the advance of the expense by a body (cooperative society, municipality, state, employer) and appropriate financial or fiscal facilities that economists foresee and regulate in various forms, whether in the statutes of companies, financing bodies and cooperatives, or in the vast legislation on the matter of all civilized States.
The interest shown by employers in the problem is noteworthy, sometimes out of interest, for the advantage of keeping the most valuable labor bound to themselves, materially or morally, often through acts of liberality, dictated by contingent reasons, or better, and today in a preeminent way, by the consciousness of a social duty.
The employer's interest proves all the more effective the more the two parties remain on a footing of equality and no positions of beneficiary and benefactor are established. The clearer consciousness of one's own dignity as a man, gradually revealed by the worker in the evolution of society, forbids him to accept anything that he does not know to be the fruit of his activity and makes him loathe its gratuitousness, sometimes suspect. Therefore the employer, in order to provide his employees with popular houses, must assist them with interventions apt to put them in the conditions to acquire it with time, work and saving, and not oblige them to gratitude with liberality or paternalism.
In the social picture the function of the popular house is eminent, as an effective factor of education and elevation. In the precariousness, and often the pettiness, of life of persons on a fixed wage and limited income, dependent on others for their sustenance, the concept of security of housing, and even more that of ownership of the popular house, is an active element in the evolution of social relations toward cordiality and solidarity, rather than toward indifference and antagonism. The dignity of a free man is more easily acquired by one who is sure of his popular house, and in it finds concretized man's ancient and constant aspiration to ownership. On the individual and on the family the popular house, albeit small and modest, but conceived and carried out with meticulous study, with generous spirit, with affectionate care, exercises a continuous, discreet and lasting educational function, since it is well known that from the environment man draws a good part of his immediate impressions and stamps his spirit with them.
Economic reasons have hitherto confined popular houses to the suburbs, in shabby and squalid districts that materially mark a harsher separation between the classes. The idea is now affirmed that the popular house should stand among the others of the city, with no other distinction than a more rigorous economy of design and construction; with this the working population lives in closer contact with the other social classes, with mutual advantage, inasmuch as only from an intimate and continuous acquaintance are born a clearer understanding or at least a serene tolerance. This acquaintance leads the lower classes to a fruitful emulation, and the more well-off to a more severe sense of social solidarity. In the reborn Christian society, alongside the Church and the school, the popular house stands as a living field of experience, of teaching and often of apostolate; so that providing for its construction with economic acts is not enough, but one must above all approach it with an act of faith.
Building types. Buildings are distinguished into three types: a) the isolated popular house, with one, two, three, four dwellings; b) the terraced popular house, with one or two dwellings; c) the block popular house, with several dwellings.
Type a) is theoretically the ideal because it allows the maximum independence of each family, an excellent orientation of the building and an easy adaptability to any nature of terrain. Each popular house has a green space, divided into lots for each dwelling, cultivable as a garden or vegetable plot. These advantages are counterbalanced by the high cost of the land per unit of dwelling, by the considerable extension of the common services of roads, sewers, gas and water pipes, electric and telephone lines.
Type b) is formed by a succession of several elements with one or two dwellings, built side by side. It is rarely used in Italy, more frequent in France, Belgium, in the Anglo-Saxon countries and also in the United States, where entire villages of rows of little houses arise in parallel lines. The effect is monotonous and depressing, if the architect's taste does not intervene to vary the cadenced succession of identical elements. The rows have a green space on the front and on the back divided into lots corresponding to the dwellings. The adoption of this type is convenient for small extra-urban agglomerations, when they can be arranged at the sides or on one side of the provincial road, without building other roads.
Type c) is the most economical, especially in urban areas; the scheme is a multi-story building in an open or closed block, oriented according to the best sun exposure. The general costs of land, construction and services are reduced to a minimum; electric and telephone lines, pipes and roads are short and rationally exploited. The block type allows, at equal cost per dwelling unit, a more complete and perfect arrangement of systems and services compared with the other types. The space between the building blocks must be equal to their height, to guarantee a minimum of insolation to the lower floors during the winter months. Access to the dwellings is on the stair landing, with two or three entrances; the entrance from a common balcony, already practiced some time ago, is little used in Italy, more frequent in northern Europe.
There are no reasons for absolute preeminence among the three types; they are adopted from time to time according to evaluations depending on the factors of climate, terrain, locality, economy; often happy town-planning solutions are obtained with a careful use of the three types in the same place.
Bibliography5 works
Carlo M. Celeghin