What factors precipitated housing crisis for immigrants and the working poor?

What needed to change?

How does this crisis mirror/relate to current conditions of housing in New York?

As more people begin to migrate to New York to find jobs and better opportunities, the population starts to sky rocket. High population leads to high demands in housing for everyone creating tight living spaces and a bigger income for land lords making land precious. Although this situation came to benefit land owners, it didn’t benefit the new incoming immigrants and the working poor. The mass amounts of tenants living under the same building and cramped street blocks, caused diseases to spread at a rapid pace and over crowding city blocks did not allow for natural light to come in, along with no space for nature or open areas for the general public.

The first main factor that affected immigrants and the working poor were the unsanitary health conditions that they were living in.  As land owners began to realize that every inch of their land was lucrative, through providing housing to immigrants, they decided to cramp and make as many living spaces as they could. They achieved this by making each living space smaller to fit in more tenants to fully maximize their profit. By cramping in so many people, the amount of waste each individual produced was all collected on sight creating a foul smell and spreading diseases coming from feces that was left for days with out being cleaned up. At the time, their form of garbage disposal was throwing it out their window down to the street, next to their neighboring buildings that did the same within just a few feet apart.  The Lung Block is a perfect example of the problems that arise from overcrowding. The Lung Block was an NYC block that was packed with over congested buildings and had to be demolished in order to solve disease expansion because it was the most disease infested block. Not only were the buildings unsanitary, the streets were also filled with horse manure and dead horses that were left rotting without being properly disposed of.

While overcrowding lots would cause unsanitary conditions it also blocked nature from coming in. As many landlords took advantage of their lots by building up to the property with a small gap in between each building lot, the amount of sunlight that would seep through the windows was very scarce. The lack of sun light would take a toll in tenants physical and mental health. Not only did this block sunlight out, but it also blocked clean air from ventilating properly though each space. A need for change was imperative.

In order to resolve these issues, there were competitions created to see who would come up with the best plan to organize a building lot shape such as the dumbbell scheme in 1879 through 1899 where a court yard was implemented in the middle. Along with these competitions there were also regulations being put in place in order to control these issues created in 1856. These acts would put rules in place to regulate the amount of lot coverage used to build, height limits to allow for sun exposure, number of toilets needed per tenant with windows and specified ceiling heights. All to help improve the way of living for the emerging growth population.