3/20/2024 0 Comments Tenement housing blueprint inside![]() Basic safety measures, like self-closing doors, were left unchecked, allowing a small fire to spread across a building, suffocating people far away from the source of the fire. In January 2022, 17 people died in a preventable fire at the Twin Parks North West apartment complex in the Bronx. Health and safety are far from guaranteed in New York City’s housing. Most tenants in New York City are “rent burdened,” which means they pay too high a percentage of their monthly income towards rent, leaving them vulnerable to displacement and anchored to cheaper and badly-maintained housing. Unfortunately, despite these regulatory changes, the plight of tenants in New York City remains dire. Finally, today, tenants have access to free legal counsel in eviction cases, altering the balance of power between landlords and tenants. NYCHA, a massive system of public housing and housing vouchers, provides or enables access to housing for more than 500,000 of the most vulnerable and lowest-income New Yorkers.Īnd most relevant to what Riis documented, the Housing Maintenance Code and the Multiple Dwelling Law established basic standards for health, safety, and habitability of apartments. Rent regulation, strengthened in 2019, protects hundreds-of-thousands of tenants from arbitrary rent increases, provides lease renewals, and allows succession rights to leaseholds. To be fair, many things have improved for tenants since the 1890s. Today, 132 years later, much of New York City’s housing stock is still bad: unsafe water, broken elevators, mold, lack of heat, roaches, and rats. ![]() ![]() In 1890, Jacob Riis photographed and documented the inhumane conditions of tenements in New York City: the lack of light, air, space, and basic sanitation. The half that was on top cared little for the struggles, and less for the fate of those who were underneath, so long as it was able to hold them there and keep its own seat.” “Long ago it was said that ‘one half of the world does not know how the other half lives.’ That was true then. Today, 132 years later, much of New York City’s housing stock is still bad: unsafe water, broken elevators, mold, lack of heat, roaches, and rats.”Īdi TalwarBlack mold-infested room in a Washington Heights apartment.ĬityViews are readers’ opinions, not those of City Limits. “In 1890, Jacob Riis photographed and documented the inhumane conditions of tenements in New York City: the lack of light, air, space, and basic sanitation.
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