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Another accomplishment of Mr. Cutting's, and from the medical aspect far more important, has been his City & Suburban Homes Co. He is its chairman, and for 30 years has been using its funds to build sanitary tenements that could be rented at low sums. His method of doing this is very simple. He gets his building money from rich men, who are more than glad to get 5% certain earnings on their investments. With this cheap construction money he puts up apartments that rent, on the average, for $2.53 a room a week. In the latest buildings each apartment has electric lights and private bath. In older constructions, lacking these conveniences, the average rent is $1.99 a room a week. The tenants pay their rent promptly. One year, when total rentals were $826,483, only $18 remained unpaid. During the generation that the City & Suburban Homes Co. has functioned, unpaid rents have averaged $30 a year. No other landlord has such prompt and complete rental payments. And the health of Mr. Cutting's tenants is several times better than that of the average resident of the five boroughs that make up New York City.* When the city death rate was 12.94 for each 1,000 persons, the death rate in his buildings was a third of that.
* Manhattan, Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, Richmond.