How the Other Half Lives: Chapter 24 Summary & Analysis

In response to the question of what has been done for the tenement-house problem in New York for the past 20 years, Riis notes that the law has made attempts, though there have been many obstacles to its success. Still, one improvement has been to make it illegal to construct tenements over an entire lot, so as to entirely block out air and sunlight. Similarly, public outcry has increased, even if it usually only rears up sporadically in response to a particularly blatant or disgraceful affair. This unsteady interest accounts in part for the slow progress of the authorities in dealing with the problem. Much stronger effort is needed to pressure landlords against neglect. It’s harder to convince a landlord that he’s killing his tenants just as a thief steals property, since the process is so slow and gradual.

Riis acknowledges that housing the poor must probably, though sadly, remain a business: as a charity it will always fail. Still, he reflects that if model tenements are expertly managed, it would do a great deal of good. Riis compares the work of business in wiping out the worst tenements to Napoleon III, the French emperor who ordered the demolition and modern rebuilding of Paris in the 1850s. Riis recalls returning to one tenement after a few short weeks to find it entirely gone, with an army of workmen laying a new foundation for a warehouse.

Riis describes one well-intentioned tenement building effort that failed. Called “Big Flat” and built as a model tenement, it soon became home to thieves and gangs, who took advantage of two open streets—which the builders had assumed would be a decent means of ventilation—to turn the neighborhood to their own advantage.

Riis describes the poorest New Yorkers as “shiftless, destructive, and stupid,” but also says that the tenements have made them this way. He tells the story of a philanthropist who decided to fit out the tenement house he owned with tubs, decent plumbing, and wood-closets: rather than be grateful, his tenants used the wood-closet boards for kindling and sold the pipes and faucets for cash at the junk shop. Since then he’s been convinced of the depravity of tenement residents, without understanding the importance of education.

Riis admits that education works slowly: he’s seen the police break up beer dives only to see them rearrange themselves and become ever more destructive. The rapid increase in and heightened crowding of the tenement population only worsens the issue: from 468,492 residents in 1869, the number is now over 1,250,000, and people continue to stream into the cities. Workers will always sacrifice comfort to live near their work, he says.

Another problem Riis cites is the absentee landlord, who owns the building but washes his hands of anything that happens there: as a result, any official attempts to improve accountability prove highly difficult, when the landlords can hardly be found.

But good management is, Riis argues, the key to reform: the best idea is to have a competent manager who can be accountable to everything that’s going on there. Tenants respond eagerly to fair efforts on their behalf. The change in the African-American population’s “character” since they’ve moved to more decent tenements in Yorkville is one example. Riis also recalls visiting a dingy, dark tenement in the Tenth Ward which he knew had a bad reputation, but which was now home to a new housekeeper who had single-handedly improved the surroundings—and, as a result, the character of those living there.

Riis acknowledges the benefits of philanthropy in the tenements, especially in that charitable missions have brought the well-to-do and the poor within speaking distance of each other in a way that rarely otherwise happens—even if much remains to be done.