You Can't Even Be Born These Days!

1920

Landlords Put Clause Against Babies in Lease

NEW YORK, N.Y. — The old-fashioned landlord who refused to let an apartment to a family including very young children was a gentleman, scholar and philanthropist, E. W. Engel, a Brooklyn attorney, says, in comparison to a new variety of landlord which has sprung up in parts of the Brownsville district and adopted the rule:

BABIES ARE FORBIDDEN TO BE BORN ON THESE PREMISES.

Attorney Engel, who represents the Tenants' Union of Brownsville, exhibited a new form of lease wherein the landlord lets and the tenant hires an apartment for one year, "to be used and occupied for dwelling purposes only by father, mother and not more than two children."

"In my opinion," said Mr. Engel, "there isn't a court in christendom that would sustain a lease with this clause in it. Without question it is against public policy. But it serves to show the spirit animating a certain percentage of the profiteering landlords of today, who will have to be brought to book pretty soon if New York is to escape serious trouble.

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, March 20, 1920, page 1.