UNIX/Apache Viewing

I have FreeBSD 4.4 running with Apache 1.3.26. Everything works fine except for seeing directory structure. For all users of the machine, you cannot see their directory structure if no index.html file is present in their public_html folder. For insatance if I tried to navigate to http://servername.com/~user, I would get the message “Forbidden You don’t have permission to access /~user/ on this server. Please HELP!! Thanks in advance!!