THEY PAY NO RENT
IN GARFIELD COURT.
LANDLORDLESS TENEANTS LIVE
THERE IN FILTHY HOUSES.
"When the Horse Moved Out," Said
One, "Me and My Old Woman
Moved In" -- Children Are Not
Allowed to Attend School.
If you are "broke" in conscience, as well as in purse, go out to unwashed Garfield court the first of the month and try to collect the rent. Some of the tenants might be gullible enough to succumb to your bluff, for as far as they know they are landlordless now, but are looking for the owner to turn up almost any time.
Approximately, Garfield court is near the corner of Twenty-ninth street and Southwest boulevard., but that is just a ruse to misdirect the feet of the unwary stranger. You get off the Rosedale car at Twenty-ninth street and ramble off in a general northwesterly direction, which y our pocket compass, if its needle is a well-trained one, will indicate. About this time you will run into a clothesline in complete apparel. Then off your port quarter across the Frisco tracks you will make out a champagne colored cow, tethered near a pile of garbage. You must next bear off in a course laying due sou'-by-sou'west, until an imposing looking woodshed is sighted. Be not deceived, for that is not your destination, but if you will only keep a few more feet you will have at last attained Garfield court-on-Turkey creek.
HERE, DISENCHANTMENT BEGINS.
In name it sounds like a group of detatched apartments inhabited by the bon ton, and in fact Garfield court doesn't look so impossible when looking down between the row of eighteen houses which face each other. They are all two-storied, the lower half of stone and the upper of frame construction. But when you get around at the rear and look into some of the unoccupied houses your leniency fades.
The court is under the taboo of the board of education and all of the children, there are seventeen of them, hailing from the unsanitary row, have been barred from the Lowell school for bacteriological and kindred reasons. The tenement commissioners have been after the city health officers to adopt remedial measures in regard to this particular tenement for the past year, but the festive germs still hold high carnival there without molestation.
THEY PAY NO RENT.
"What you goin' to do when the rent comes 'roun'?" is a question that doesn't bother the tenants in the least, and they live in blissful gratuity, rentally speaking. Thus ownerless, it should give rise to little wonder that the court is a good deal run down at the heels, from both physical and sanitary standpoints.
"What rent do you pay?" was asked o one of the more loquacious tenants.
He said, "I don't mind tellin' you, stranger, that we don't pay none, and we don't intend to pay any until the last gun's fired.
"Some time ago somebody came down the row, sayin' we'd have to get out, but that didn't amount to shucks. We just stayed here an' 're here yet.. Yes the other side of the row is fillin' up right fast and I guess they won't be any empty ones left, before long.
WHEN THE HORSE MOVED.
" 'Bout a year ago somebody had a horse in here, then they led him out on the railroad track and let a train run over him. I guess the fellow got damages all right. When the horse moved out, me and my woman moved in."
Most of the tenants said they had been there since the Armourdale flood. All of the houses are in wretched condition and it is hard to understand how they could have been allowed to run down, for with expenditure of a reasonable amount of money they could be put in habitable shape again. The cellars are filled with silt deposited by the overflow of Turkey creek and in every room of the unoccupied houses is indescribable filth.
The city water has been cut off on account of non-payment of bills, and the sanitation of the tenements consequently impaired. Dr. Charles B. Irwin, inspector under the tenement commission, is thoroughly aroused over the conditions and his report to the commission recommends immediate remedial measures.
