SECRETARY NEW YORK TENEMENT HOUSE COMMITTEE; FORMER SPECIAL
INVESTIGATOR OCTAVIA HILL ASSOCIATION, PHILADELPHIA
One would expect to see bad housing in Pittsburgh as a natural result
of the congested condition of the city, partially hemmed in by
waterways, and of the presence of an increasing population of factory
workers ready to accept whatever living accommodations are available
near their places of employment. Unhealthful homes, however, are
especially dangerous in Pittsburgh, where their influence has been
combined with that of city crowding, and of smoky, gas-laden air and
polluted water. Badly constructed houses and defective drainage are an
evil in the case of the country laborer, but far worse for a Pittsburgh
factory employe.
The tenement, with its usual accompaniments, has been a growing
menace, although it has not yet obtained so great a hold as in many
large cities. In 1900, one-ninth of the total population of the city
was living in buildings now legally defined as "tenements,"--that is,
occupied by three or more families each. Since that time it is said
that the proportion of tenements and tenement dwellers has become
considerably larger.
The city has recognized its dangers and a beginning has been made in
the framing of state legislation and city ordinances to meet them.
The housing and health laws applying to Pittsburgh in many respects
are like those for Philadelphia. There is no department of health, but
there is a bureau of health in the Department of Public Safety, and
similarly a bureau of building inspection.
The powers of the Bureau of Health in relation to housing conditions
are more limited than those of corresponding departments in many
other cities in the lack of authority to vacate buildings unfit for
habitation. The writer had occasion to visit in Pittsburgh a large
ramshackle frame tenement house, insufficiently lighted and ventilated,
dirty and miserably overcrowded. The building, which had originally
been a mill, was obviously unfit for occupation. For some time "Tammany
Hall" had been almost as notorious in Pittsburgh as the infamous
"Gotham Court" was in New York. The whole frame work was so poorly
constructed that it seemed hopeless that the owner would consider
improvements worth while for a building of this character, yet the
Bureau of Health could not have the house vacated, and the tenants
continued to live in their wretched quarters.[8]
[8] After long delays this house has now been torn down. The Bureau of
Health took a determined stand in requiring compliance with the law
if the building was to continue to be occupied as a tenement, and the
owner finally became wearied and had the house destroyed.
Since 1867, one year after its creation, the Board of Health in New
York has had authority to vacate buildings unfit for occupation, and
in 1887 it was expressly included in the law that this power applied
to any building "unfit for human habitation because of defects in
drainage, plumbing, ventilation, or the construction of the same, or
because of the existence of a nuisance on the premises, and which is
likely to cause sickness among its occupants." This provision is still
in force at the present day and has been extended to the Tenement House
Department as well. In the course of a year the latter department alone
vacated between one and two hundred houses. Similar powers are held in
other cities. In Boston and Chicago they are exercised. In Washington
many buildings have been not only vacated, but demolished. Nor is
this authority confined to the largest cities; Jersey City, with a
population 100,000 less than Pittsburgh's, and Rochester, with 40,000
less than Jersey City, both have health boards with full powers in this
regard.
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