Nowhere to live? No hiding from bad government policies

In the mid-1800s, slum housing in cities like New York had no air, no light, no water, no electricity, no gas, and no toilets. Thousands of cramped tenement apartments had no outside windows for light and air — only a doorway leading to a common, unlit interior hallway and stairwell. Water was from a well in a courtyard, perilously close to the pit for the buckets of waste from the apartments. The tenants froze in winter and sweltered in summer. Disease spread through overcrowded buildings as plagues of cholera...