| 19-27 | 23-30
Fifth level--Comparable to better type of | |
middle-class city home | 25-35 | 28-35
----------------------------------------------+-----------+-----------
* The cheapest type of shelter (shack) may be built for perhaps half
this cost.

_Pre-fabricated Houses._--The field of house construction has been
occupied almost exclusively by the individual architect or builder who has
wrought according to the general ideas of the intending occupant or the
real estate developer. When the plans are completed and approved, the
contractor assembles the necessary materials from local sources, builds
and equips the house and turns it over to the buyer in completed
condition. Under such a procedure there is little application of mass
production measures which have reduced costs and raised quality standards
in many industries, notably in automobile construction, for example.

Thousands of houses built to sell in the recent construction era of the
1920's have proved unsatisfactory and costly to the occupants as the
result of shoddy building methods. Such methods seem to be typically
American as distinguished from the far more solid and permanent Old World
procedure. It now seems likely that the problem of economical and
substantial housing will be met in the method that is also
American--namely, by the pre-fabricated house to which various natural
resources of the country contribute. The parts of such houses are made
under mass production methods and easily assembled on the owner's lot. The
same idea can be applied with ease to apartment house construction in any
location. The first step in this direction has already been mentioned in
the case of mail-order companies which cut the lumber to fit and supply
every needed accessory to the last detail.

The next step, and the one that bids fair to inaugurate an entirely new
house-building procedure, is now in the making, although as yet it is in
the experimental and testing stage. Examples of such construction made
their first public appearance at the Century of Progress Exposition at
Chicago in 1933.

Materials that enter into the construction of these new-type houses
include steel, asbestos, aluminum and cement. As a rule, the buildings
have a steel frame erected on cement foundations and without a cellar; the
walls and partitions are of asbestos composition and the roof constructed
of steel sheets wit