Old Days. Old Ways.

For some reason yesterday, I began thinking of my fifth-grade elementary school teacher. Her name was Edith Rupe and she enjoyed the reputation of being one of the most popular teachers at Lakeside Elementary in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, an all-white institution of learning at the time.

I know little of her private life. I know she was unmarried and lived in a boarding house that I think was located on Sixth Street, at the edge of Downtown. The school was on 15^th Street so she walked or rode the bus to and fro. A bus ran within a block of the school.

I can’t determine what her salary would have been. Some records indicate teachers were paid an average of $3,000 per year but I can’t imagine that they were paid half that in my hometown. The African-American teachers probably received less than half that of white teachers.

At any rate, it was a lonely and minimal experience that she must have led as she trained young minds to face the future. Her only companion was a parakeet who died when I was in her class. She squashed our offer to take up collection for a replacement, choosing more loneliness over more heartbreak. Televisions wouldn’t become common for several years, so it is a bit comforting to know that she lived only a few blocks from the (white) city library.

Boarding houses, rooming houses, or resident hotels, as they were called, afforded a common source of housing for American workers who could not afford the $9,000 average cost of a new home or the $80 per month average rent of a full apartment. Rooms at a boarding house included meals. Patrons relied primarily on public transit or walking for access to jobs. Boarding houses existed well into the 1970s and began to fade from the urban landscape. Here is the last one I remember.

It stood in Little Rock a few blocks from our state’s Capitol and the building exists to this day. It has been recycled as a commercial use for decades.

What caused the demise of boarding houses? They once served as entry-level abodes for newcomers moving to the city for their first job. Safety made them popular with young females. Low price made them popular with students. Racial conditions made them segregated.

Some scholars blame local zoning and building codes for the passing of this type of dwelling. I’m sure that played its part, although most zoning ordinances in our state still list them as an allowable use in certain districts, as long as those districts are far away from the rich folks.

At the same time, building codes portray the audacity of requiring that buildings have adequate structural components, safe electrical systems, and meet the nebulous social designation of being “decent, safe, and sanitary.”

Also, most areas of our state lack public transit systems, and despite the urging of planners, walking to work in temperatures of 90-plus degrees and 100-percent humidity isn’t nearly as socially soothing as it might seem.

That brings up the matter of the automobile as the default system of conveyance. Even a modest requirement of one parking space per unit might require more space for the automobile than for the tenants.

Some murmuring is circulating that boarding houses might represent at least a partial solution to the present crisis in affordable housing and its tragic offspring: homelessness. As with many elements of the urban landscape, most people would consider that a fine idea, as long as the results didn’t end up anywhere near their own backyard.

And so it goes.