How the Other Half Lives

If those who are unhoused and unemployed are to find lodging anywhere besides the appalling stale-beer dives, they are most likely to find it in cheap lodging-houses. The cheaper the lodging-house, the more likely it is to breed destitution and crime. Most lodgers are rootless young men. Police reports identify hundreds of young men in recent years who hatched their criminal schemes inside these houses. One such man skipped town and was later shot to death while robbing corpses in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, after the catastrophic flood of 1889. Another, David Smith, was convicted and sent to prison after terrorizing a 14-year-old runaway boy into begging every day, physically abusing the child, and then stealing the money. Riis cites these as examples of the problems that ensue from New York City’s failure to provide decent housing. Riis then describes the “amenities” in ten- and seven-cent lodging houses, which are “different grades of the same abomination” (86). A photograph (“Bunks in a Seven-Cent Lodging House, Pell Street”) shows no beds or blankets but a series of cots made of thin-looking fabric hung between boards, two bunks high. The owner of three such seven-cent houses is a wealthy man who “earns” a combined $8,000 annual profit (approximately $250,000 in 21st-century income). Here is another example of Riis’s major argument that the problem of housing New York City’s impoverished population stems from greed. Police statistics show a “homeless army” of more than five million people who found shelter in such establishments during the past year, an annual average of 14,000 unhoused people per night seeking refuge in these houses alone (89). Politicians notice these houses only around election times, when unscrupulous political bosses need to marshal votes.