A few of these families were found living in so-called “basements”, more than three-fourths under ground, a direct violation of a municipal ordinance.[4] Some rooms had no other opening than a door. The rents paid for such quarters are often beyond belief. In one of these rooms in the Hill District, where only the upper halves of the windows were level with the sidewalk, lived a man, his wife and their five children, the eldest of whom was sixteen years old. The rental was six dollars per week. Another family paid twenty-five dollars per month for three small rooms on the ground floor. The kitchen was so damp and close that the investigator found it impossible to remain for long, because it was difficult to breathe. The ceilings in many of the houses visited were very low, hardly higher than six or seven feet and the rooms were often piled high with furniture. That the owners of these houses cared little about improving their houses was indicated in several cases by the fact that water faucets and toilets had been out of commission for months, and no effort at repair had been made. [Illustration: “Basement” Occupied by a Migrant Family. The Only Opening in this Dwelling Appears in the Picture.] Because of these bad conditions many peculiar maladjustments exist. A certain man lived in a rooming house, while his young wife and baby lived in another place. In addition to his own rent and board, he paid ten dollars a week for the keep of his wife and baby. In another case, a family was forced to pay six dollars a month storage on the furniture which they had brought from the South, because their new quarters were too cramped to accommodate it. A goodly number of the migrants have evidently been accustomed to much better living conditions than are offered them here, and in spite of almost insurmountable obstacles, still preserve something of their cleanly habits. Few of these people intend to remain here unless they can get a better place to stay. All complained, some with tears in their eyes, of the bad housing accorded them. As one intelligent and hard working woman who lived in one room expressed it while packing her trunks to go back to Sylvester, Georgia, “I never lived in such houses in my life. We had four rooms in my home.” This woman was earning ten dollars per week and her husband was profitably employed, yet they choose to relinquish the comparatively large rewards of the North, rather than do without the decencies of life which they had known in the South. _TABLE NUMBER VIII_ _Ages of the 506 Migrants Interviewed_