Access to housing
In 1890, New York was ranked by the New York Census Bureau as the city with highest population in the US. It consisted of 1.5 million inhabitants. According to Riis, it was one of the planet’s highly populated places, as he pictured on a large-scope panoramic map. As a result, Riis and a circle of municipal citizen reform team, including social welfare activists, worked to raise public awareness and gather statistic evidence. Therefore, they raised demands to acquire new housing designs to aid in improving cleanliness, access to light and air, improve fire safety, and ease overcrowding. This was a forty-year effort that could be enacted by tearing down rear tenets, cleaning the streets, demolishing the Mulberry Bend neighborhoods, and five-point neighborhoods. Besides, it involved creating playgrounds and parks and cutting down windows via inner walls to allow sufficient light in.
Living conditions
As an immigrant, Riis was homeless while new to the US. As a result, he wrote about those who were homeless and those who fell on hard times. He wrote that the main reasons for reforms on living conditions since many became homeless after they were evicted from their tenement homes due to their inability to afford the rents rapidly escalated. Besides, some of these people had injuries or lost their jobs. Other causes of poor living conditions included the landlords' greed and the indifference of employers (Davidov & Semyonov, 2017). However, those who did not actively seek work or those who begged for a living were known as “tramps.” This reform was enacted through his campaign against police lodging homeless shelters. This was as a result of poor conditions which steered the spread of diseases and crimes. As a result, in 1896, the police station lodging houses were closed, and those who experienced displacement were to be served by improved civic and charitable services.
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References
Davidov, E., & Semyonov, M. (2017). Attitudes toward immigrants in European societies.
International Center of Photography. (2018). Artist: Jacob Riis. Retrieved from https://www.icp.org/browse/archive/constituents/jacob-riis?all/all/all/all/0
