Residential Apartments and Resident Guidelines

There will be a wide variety of living accommodations available for Victory City residents. There will be something for everyone, and something for everyone's pocketbook from the least expensive to the most expensive and everything in between.

The least expensive will be a ward for perhaps 50 people. Each will have a bunk and small locker. All 50 will share the same bathroom. There will be wards for men, women, students, the retired and elderly, and the poor, as well as for temporary visitors.

All apartments would come completely furnished, and a variety of 1-bedroom, 2-bedroom or 3-bedroom apartments would be available. Also available will be spacious luxury apartments in many sizes. Living in any size apartment in Victory City will be like living in a luxury resort hotel.

"Quiet" Versus "Regular" Zones

The residential area could be divided into "quiet" and "regular" zones, where TV's, stereos and musical instruments are banned from the "quiet" zones. Another possibility will be to install a Muzak-type system in each apartment so residents could listen to a central source of music, news and other programs whenever they wanted. All of these programs could be turned off by Victory City between 10-11 PM, and the volume turned down between 9-10 PM in order to enable people to sleep better at night. Separate loudspeakers could be used for emergency announcements, which should be regulated by Victory City, independent of the tenants' control.

Special Floors for Families with Babies and Small Children

Families with newborn babies will be given first choice to rent apartments on the 1st and 2nd floors. First-floor apartments will have small private patios fenced off in the park area and next to the apartment itself.

Removable Metal Partition Walls

Aside from being fireproof, the partition walls will enable the Victory City management to be more flexible in meeting the constantly changing needs of businesses. The partitions will be removable, and they could be rearranged in a wide variety of ways to meet the constantly changing needs.

Hotel Rooms

Hotel rooms will be located in the interior or center area of the Residential Buildings, with the residential apartments lining the outside or exterior walls. Hotel rooms can be rented by guests and visitors, of course, but they can also be rented by Victory City residents who might desire additional living or storage space across the hall from their apartments.

5-Minute Apartment Renovation

Rooms will be finished in standard-sized metal panels with a baked-on enamel color coating. In the case of vacancy, renovation will take approximately 5 minutes. A crew of maintenance men will load a dolly with panels for the size and type room that is vacant. The dolly will be rolled in, the old panels taken off the wall and loaded on the dolly, the new panels taken off the dolly and snapped onto the wall. The old panels then will be rolled down to the maintenance shop where they will be either cleaned or have a new color baked onto them. Then they will be stored until needed in another vacant apartment.

There will be brackets designed to hold pictures and metal shelves to hold books, clocks and bric-a-brac, etc. These features will be included around the room in a number of places to give the tenant a variety of locations for his personal decoration and other items.

5-Minute Renovation Means Low Vacancy Loss

One of the biggest expenses in operating an apartment building is the total loss due to vacancy. The total loss will include:

During periods of high vacancy ratios, a modern-day apartment may be vacant for several months or the greater part of a year. In this case, loss of rent due to vacancy makes a very high cost. In a Victory City, however, even during periods of high vacancy ratios, the demand for apartments will be great because of the uniqueness of Victory City. People are tired of riots and high crime rates and are eager for a safe, secure place to live. In times of inflation, the great economy, efficiency and convenience of Victory City will always exert an irresistible appeal.

People will be expected to move into a Victory City apartment as soon as it is ready for occupancy, and usually it will be made ready in a matter of minutes. Therefore, apartments could be rented the same day they become vacant, which means no loss of rent due to vacancy.

In this case, the only loss will be in the form of administrative costs, which will be minimal due to the fact that all the apartments are located in the same complex and are easy and convenient to show to prospective tenants.

Eviction and Eviction Costs

Nine times out of ten, when a person is evicted from an apartment, it is for nonpayment of rent. This situation could never arise in Victory City because of the requirements for a minimum bank balance for each size apartment, coupled with the moving of people to smaller and cheaper apartments whenever their balance drops below the minimum. If a resident living in one of the wards, where he will have only a bed and a locker, suddenly found himself in a financial position where his bank balance had dropped below the minimum required for a ward, then that resident will have to be put out.

A resident will agree in writing (by signing the rental contract in advance of renting an apartment or ward) to allow Victory City to put him/her out if his/her bank balance drops below the minimum requirement for a ward. This will save Victory City the cost of obtaining court-ordered evictions.

In the old obsolete cities, it will be impossible for apartment building managers to adopt the Victory City system. As it is, those apartment buildings have a steady stream of evictions, which represent a high operating cost. The money to pay this cost has to come from somewhere. Although at first glance it may appear to come out of the profits of the apartment building owner, in reality, eviction costs, as all other costs, have to come from the rents or gross income. As eviction costs or any other costs go up, the rents go up. This puts an unfair burden on the responsible tenants who always pay their full rent on time.

In Victory City, since there will be no eviction costs, and thus the rents will be cheaper and the unfair burden on the responsible tenant will be eliminated. The cheaper rents will be another factor in making Victory City apartments highly competitive with those in the old obsolete cities.

See also: Slides 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24 and 25 of the Victory City Tour.