Chapter 574 (2/2)

Compared with diamonds, housing at least was far more practical.

However, in order to realize his goals, he could not set a too high standard, making people feel it was impossible to reach. In his city, now people could apply for renting a house with one gold royal and after that, they only needed to pay one gold royal as rent every year. When the rent they paid equaled to the house price, the house would belong to the renter spontaneously.

The target was not easy to achieve, as even the cheapest single room would cost 20 gold royals. That meant all the workers, for example, the temporary workers and handymen, would take 20 years to afford such a house which was less than 15 square meters and could only contain one bed, one table and one bathroom. People would call him a black-hearted realtor in the era where Roland came from.

All in all, according to Barov’s statistics, “The City of Love” was undoubtedly successful in promoting his idea.

Most of the renting applications came from the several batches refugees and serfs who arrived in the Border Area first, and house purchase requests were mostly proposed by the craftsmen with higher salaries and the broken nobles who had carried properties with them. After they all settled down here, they would become part of the City of Neverwinter forever.

Based on this successful experience, Roland had already figured out the contents of a new drama whose theme was getting married and working hard to buy a big house.

“Well done.” He rolled up the list and gave it to Barov. “Besides, the recent solicitation of the refugees should continue to expand its scope, the plentiful population is the base for the development of the City of Neverwinter and other tasks can be put aside for it.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.” Barov laughed till his mustache was curled up.

“By the way, go and get Scroll. I have something to tell her.”

…

“Your Majesty, did you want to see me?” Scroll walked into the office in a black skirt and white blouse, looking very capable.

“I want to expand the education scope, which will cover the refugees who have just arrived at the City of Neverwinter.” Roland poured a cup of tea for her. “If the education only aims at the official citizens, the refugees would have to wait at least one more year to receive primary education.”

“I’m afraid this is untenable now,” Scroll said after several minutes consideration. “There’re too many of them. The current teacher couldn’t take care of them all and the classrooms are not enough either. If we do as you ask, the number of the education ministry’s staff would need to be doubled or tripled.”

“I have a method which can reduce the teachers’ pressure.” Roland paused for a while and continued, “Let them study by themselves.”

“Self-study?”

“Yes, every week we give one public lecture which only teaches them the basic reading and writing, and let them use the booklets with pictures and pronunciations to do some exercises by themselves in the rest of the time. There are no achievement tests and no mandatory requirements, and they learn according to their own free will.”

“This…” She ran her fingers through her hair which was soaked wet by the rain unconsciously. “It’s unlikely to have any effect. Your Majesty, without supervision, nine out of ten people won’t learn well.”

“It doesn’t matter. I just want to offer them an opportunity,” Roland laughed and said.

There was always someone who was unsatisfied with boring, low-paid jobs and was eager to achieve their goals quickly. In order to prevent these people from stepping aside, he must guide them to improve themselves in the right way.

In the future, more and more jobs would have literacy requirements, and the salaries for these jobs would be much higher than the handymen’s. Given that, for those who wanted to buy a house and get rid of their poor and exhausting lives, it would be a better choice for them to learn how to read and write by themselves.

Through this method, those hardworking people could participate in the city’s construction quickly.

To keep the new regime’s vitality, the most important thing was never, ever blocking the way of promotion from the bottom layer.

That was what Roland believed.