FOREWORD some time past nearly everyone interested in public or publicly assisted large-scale housing has been saying that its success or failure will depend largely upon how it is managed. Relatively little has been done, however, to define clearly the functions and responsibilities of managers, the qualities and experience they should possess, the special preparation, if any, they should undergo, or their relation to other parts of a moving housing program. In its firstmanagement training courseNAHO has made a start on these problems but much remains to be done. Organizations of non-officials, I am sure, would also admit that they have more questions than answers on the really important phases of housing management. As its title suggests, in this book Mr. Goldfeld has not tried to give a systematic answer to these questions. It is an abridged edition of the diary he kept during the earlier days of his work as manager of the Lavanburg Homes on the lower east side of New York with editorial comments by the diarist, himself, as he looked back upon the written record after several years of successful management ex- perience. It was originally revised for the NAHO management training course in which Mr. Goldfeld was an instructor, but its character seemed to justify a wider audience. Although the diary is a strongly personal document, both in the sense of emphasizing those phases of management in which Mr. Goldfeld is himself most keenly interested and in the sense of deal- ing with those problems that actually arose in this one development, I believe it is a genuine contribution to the literature of this profession in the making. It is specific and concrete. It shows how background in certain phases of the job has to be supplemented by common sense and native ability in others. It emphasizes the fact that the really crucial problems of housing management lie in the human relations between the tenants and the manager and among the tenants themselves. Although naturally it has relatively little to say about the problems of maintaining and operating the physical plant, it does make very clear that these problems cannot be divorced from those of tenant relations without causing an unending series of troubles. I believe that NAHOs gratitude to Mr. Goldfeld will be shared by those who read this booklet. Its publication is sponsored by NAHOs Committee on Housing Management. COLEMAN WOODBURY, Director,NAHO DIARIES PREFACE are ordinarily kept by individuals to record the daily incidents of their lives. By and large they are not regarded as important documents because they are filled with the commonplace events that go to make up a persons day, important perhaps to the diarist, but uninteresting to others. Diaries are maintained by people in a variety of fields thus, every ships captain keeps a daily log military heads submit daily records to their superiors high executive officials file day-by-day reports. These daily accounts are necessary to build a permanent store of information and to help in fixing responsibilities. In the field of social welfare, a form similar to the diary has been developed as a tool of research and has usefully served the needs of both students and investigators. The Diary of a Housing Manager does not comply with any definite set of rules in regard to its form. It is offered primarily for the information on one type of housing management which it con- tains. Information on housing management, unfortunately, is meager...