How the Other Half Lives: Chapter 25 Summary & Analysis

Riis briefly sketches out what he sees to be the housing situation in New York, centered around the rights of tenement inhabitants to live in Manhattan and to be housed decently for the high amount that they’re paying. The sanitary, moral, and economic security of both “halves” of New York depends on the decent housing of the poor—and creating such housing can be a good and productive business model.

Riis admits that it may well be ideal to get rid of the tenement itself, but that is entirely impracticable: instead we must figure out what to do with it. Riis recently watched a landlord give a rundown building a coat of paint: that alone will not solve things. Instead, he argues that there are three ways of dealing with tenements: by law, by remodeling old houses, and by building new model tenements. Private enterprise must take up the latter two options, while the arrest and punishment of landlords who violate law and decency will go a long way. Riis throws out a few other suggestions about legal reforms.

Riis suggests that landlords should ally themselves to the law rather than fighting it. Ideally their investment in their property now will pay for itself in future value. He cites the example of a Miss Ellen Collins, who bought three old tenements ten years ago and has worked to rehabilitate and remodel them, in part by letting light into the hallways. She set the rents as low as possible to both get a return on her investment and promote stability among the tenants; she outfitted the houses with proper plumbing; and today the homes are bright and cheerful, with no tenant problems.

Riis admits that others have tried such reforms with little success—though this, he says, is because they’ve tired of it before the tenements had been fully “redeemed,” so they lapsed back into their former condition. Sadly, the lack of interest in the poor on the part of landlords is partly responsible for this. 

 Personal interest in the affairs of the poor must also be the case for the building of model tenements. Riis argues that, while many are skeptical that such projects will work in New York as they have in other cities, he’s personally aware of several successful initiatives. Riis admits that other cities’ plans, like Philadelphia’s to house the working classes in cottages, won’t work in Manhattan—but that’s why more concentrated, but not overcrowded, tenements are a potential solution. He cites the example of 13 houses built by the Improved Dwellings Association nine years ago. Despite unexpected expenses and amenities unknown among the poor, like coal lifts and common laundry in the basement, Riis has visited and found the operation to be fully successful.

Riis describes another “experiment” by the Tenement House Building Company in Cherry Street, home to many Russian Jews, in an area that’s more dangerous. Still, even these houses are well-kept and have also returned an interest on the invested capital. There was an original idea of making the tenants themselves profit-sharers on rent insurance, but it hasn’t yet come to fruition, though similar projects are happening elsewhere. Riis cites the example of a Brooklyn builder, Mr. A.T. White, who has built homes for 500 poor families and allowed good tenants a share in the profits in exchange for prompt payment and order.

Riis argues that if owners can be content with a 5-6 percent return on investment, model tenements can be successful: additional greed will ruin the opportunity. Just building a single good tenement is the first step to reforming the entire neighborhood, he says.

Riis concludes that he’s attempted to tell the truth as he saw it in order to do his part in encouraging justice. He recalls a recent visit to the sea, watching children playing in the surf: he was told as he watched that during winter storms this same sea swept easily across any manmade barrier in a destructive wave. Riis compares this wave to the sea of the tenement population: if it swells again from despair and enclosure, nothing will be strong enough to hold it back. Returning to the Lowell poem that served as epigraph, Riis ends on a note of warning about what might happen if the poor continue to be crushed.