Ferkai András: Housing Estates - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2005)

Government and municipal housing: the "Wekerle"

Government and municipal housing: the "Weketie"

The housing shortage in Budapest got worse after the turn of the century. Rents shot up and evictions became more frequent. It became clear to many that market forces in themselves would not end the housing misery. However, direct government and municipal intervention in home building did not begin before the end of the decade. The city was the first to start working out a programme of building small flats. During the mayoral term of István Bárczy, 19 groups of singlestorey houses were built with one room and a kitchen each as well as 23 multistorey tenement houses containing a total of 6,000 one-to-three-room flats.

The operation, which lasted from 1909 to 1912, was financed with loans raised by the municipality abroad. The estates, made up of terraced bungalows and two-storey houses, were built at various points of the city, especially in today’s Districts IX, X and XIII. They survived into the 1980s in Százados utca and Ciprus

■ Standard-design house with four flats on the Wekerle Housing Estate (Henrik Kotál.

1909)

K. ill.

4 hétszobás lakás.

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19