There is a large proportion of real estate dealers among colored men, many of whom do business with white people, the negro dealer often becoming the agent for houses which the white dealers refuse to handle. Colored people are eager to own their homes and many of them are buying small houses, divided into two flats, living in one and collecting rent from the other. The contract system prevails in Chicago, making it possible for a man with two or three hundred dollars for the first payment to enter into a contract for the purchase of a piece of property, the deed being held by the real estate man until the purchaser pays the amount stipulated in the contract. The largest district in Chicago in which colored people have resided for a number of years is the section on the South Side, known as the “black belt” which includes a segregated vice district. In this so-called “belt” the number of children is remarkably small, forming only a little more than one-tenth of the population, and an investigation made by the School of Civics showed that only 26 per cent. of the houses in the South Side and 36 per cent. of the houses in the West Side colored district, were in good repair. Colored tenants reported that they found it impossible to persuade their landlords either to make the necessary repairs or to release them from their contracts, but that it was so hard to find places in which to live that they were forced to endure insanitary conditions. High rents among the colored people, as everywhere else, force the families to take in lodgers. Nearly one-third of the population in the district investigated on the South Side and one-seventh of the population in the district investigated on the West Side were lodgers. This practice is always found dangerous to family life; it is particularly so to the boys and girls of colored families who, because they so often live near the vice districts, are obliged to have the house filled with “floaters” of a very undesirable class, so that the children witness all kinds of offenses against decency within the home as well as on the streets. [Similar conditions exist in some of the colored districts of New York City.] It was found that the rent paid by a negro is appreciably higher than that paid by any other nationality. In a flat building formerly occupied by white people, the white families paid a rent of twelve dollars for a six-room apartment for which a negro family is now paying sixteen dollars; a white family paid seventeen dollars for an apartment of seven rooms for which the negroes are now paying twenty dollars.