Recently, more attention has been given to the courtyard house, as a type to solve a number of problems of dense inner city housing.

Mr. Carples played down the effect of the economy in driving families to seek city housing.

Of its tenants, 65.1 percent are white, compared with 12.4 percent in all city public housing.

"There are 13,700 people looking for city housing, but more than 51 percent of the apartments are occupied by foreigners," he said.

Not every family in doubled-up housing needs or deserves city housing.

One sore issue was to get dilapidated and unsafe city housing boarded up.

But virtually all the suggestions involve either spending money or making modifications that are impossible in inner city social housing.

This was cheap city housing, and cars like that could only mean one thing.

We do not want doubled-up families to make themselves homeless in order to find city housing.

Still, city housing and health officials said yesterday that they were prepared to enforce the new law even though they had problems with it.