Back Allies

2 Pages 497 Words

Jacob Riis (“The Downtown Back Allies”)

The “down town back allies” depicts how the lower class of

New Yorker’s lived. Riis writes of disgusting, dilapidated conditions of

tenement housings. Families are packed into small windowless rooms where

they are forced to live due to insufficient funds. People had more trust in one

other in those times. They would keep their apartment doors open for air.

Because of this neighbors developed a closer relationship. The buildings these

people lived in were run down for various reasons. Tenants did not have much

money to fix their houses up and landlords cared more about their wallets than

people. There were often fires and hazardous conditions in these buildings.

Both the tenants and the people were to blame for these things because

neither did much to better their situations.

These buildings were specifically built for poor people by the rich

to make money. Diseases like small pox were rapidly spread in these areas due

to poor health conditions. Often, there was no heat or cool air and many

suffered from these circumstances until the end of their lives. Many of the

tenants were poor immigrants. This populace tended to flock together so,

most neighborhoods became ghettos.



Conditions like these can be found throughout New York in this day

and age. Many tenants and landlords do not pay satisfactory attention to their

living quarters. Tenants blame it on landlords and visa versa.



One can see these types of conditions in the neighborhood Brighton

Beach(Brooklyn,N.Y.). Many of the people who live in this area are immigrants

and do not speak English. Due to the language barrier the tenants are ashamed

to speak to their landlords. Tenants continue living in their unpleasant

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