Page:Chicago Race Riots (Sandburg, 1919).djvu/51

Rh of home owners in the district around 35th and State streets is desperately low as compared with other Chicago districts and as compared with the country at large.

It is easy to understand how the doubling of population during the late war made a live real estate situation. Not only was it difficult for the newcomers to buy homes, if they so desired, but it was hard at times for them even to get a place to sleep. The Urban league canvassed real estate dealers one day and found 664 colored applicants for houses on that day and only fifty supplied. The demands for quarters, the higher rentals paid by colored people and other factors were responsible for thirty-six new localities being opened up within three months, these localities having formerly been exclusively white. This increase in rents was from 5 to 30 per cent, and in a few cases 50 per cent.

"To-day we are beginning to realize that to become a good citizen, it is necessary to own a home, and that those who are renting cannot be considered other than floaters," is the comment of Jesse Binga, banker, the oldest established colored real estate dealer in Chicago.

When Binga bought one corner on South State street it was valued at $300 a front foot. It is now worth $500 a front foot. Six saloons did a fast business in that neighborhood when he entered there, and it was said of it, "You could get anything you wanted, from a footrace to a murder." Now it is a quiet, ordinary residence corner, and in behavior and cleanliness it ranks as one of the best in Chicago.

Though there are 249 building and loan associations in Chicago, there was none for the colored race until the Pyramid Building and Loan association, financed and