296

MARYLAND LAW REVIEW

[VOL. 42

Alley was the "lung block." The value of property in the 17th Ward
was in a precipitous decline.38

The upper portion of the district, found in the 14th Ward, con-
tained the houses of the Negro community's business and professional
people. A quiet residential neighborhood, properties sold for higher

" prices than in equivalent white neighborhoods. Middle-class white res-
idents still lived in the area. The best black dwellings bounded along
upper Druid Hill Avenue.39

The Housing Conditions in Baltimore report, interrupted by the

Baltimore Fire of 1904, was finished in 1907, under the direction of

Janet E. Kemp. Its statistics and photographs vividly display the hor-
rors of the slums and the plight of the slum-dwellers, but it was less
compelling when suggesting solutions.   The report's text observed:
 "Nothing but enlightened public sentiment crystallized into legislative
requirements can ever guarantee sanitary surroundings to the small
wage earner who cannot afford to pay a high-rent.40

 The report suggested legislative requirements that differed for ten-
ements and alley houses. The report proposed an inexpensive "mar-
ket" solution for tenement districts. It sought to force landlords to
improve existing tenements, and to require builders to construct model
tenements, by proposing regulations setting height limits, requirements
of separate toilets for each apartment, and annual inspections. The

  proposal was plausible. In the early twentieth century, tenements were

 profitable ventures. Commerical developers were building new flats for
the "dollar-a-day" man.41  Together, housing codes and building re-
strictions might eliminate all substandard tenements by forcing entre-
preneurs to pay the cost of improving them. The solution also was
 consistent with'the classic concept of the state's police power. The re-
port proposed regulations protecting health, safety, and morals which
 businessmen might not transgress in the pursuit of profit, but otherwise

did not interfere with the economic order.
The report's recommendations for alley districts differed. It pro-
posed to reduce the density in existing alley houses, to condemn those
 that were uninhabitable, to ban sleeping in basements, and to prohibit
 erection of additional alley houses.42 Although these measures would
improve the quality of housing, they necessarily would reduce the

38. S. OLSON, supra note 8, at 276.	-                                     -.        _

39. W. Paul, supra note 4, al 391-92.

40. J. KEMP, supra note 30, at 93.

41. R. LUBOVE, THE PROGRESSIVES AND THE SLUMS: TENEMENT HOUSE REFORM IN
NEW YORK CITY 1890-1917 182 (1962).

42. J. KEMP, supra note 30, at 87-92.