Housing Codes

Origins

Modern housing codes have their origins in mid-19th-century New York City. The industrial revolution [Page 345]drew millions of immigrants to the city, creating a demand for low-cost living quarters. Property owners responded by building tenements—5- to 7-story structures on 25-by-100-foot lots with four units for each floor. Privies were in the backyard; there was no running water. There was also no ventilation, and only two of 18 rooms on each floor had direct sunlight. Reformers were appalled at the horrendous living conditions with corresponding outbreaks of smallpox, dysentery, tuberculosis, and cholera. The New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor, established in 1843, raised the specter of the city's being overrun by beggars and thieves. Better housing was seen as a means to protect the existing order as well as to impose middle-class manners and morals on immigrant working-class people.

The New York Tenement Housing Act of 1867 required ventilation or a transom window in all sleeping rooms, proper fire escapes, proper banisters, and at least one water closet or privy for every 20 occupants. There were restrictions on use of cellars as dwellings and requirements for handling garbage. The Board of Health was authorized to require that tenements be vacated due to concerns about disease or dangerous conditions. These housing standards were expanded in the 1879 Tenement House Law (the “Old Law”), which specified air shafts between adjacent buildings, window openings into each room, and two toilets for each floor.

Housing conditions in New York City continued to be deplorable. At the turn of the 20th century, New York City had more than 80,000 tenements, three-quarters of which had been built under the Old Law. The air shaft requirement in the Old Law led to the dominance of the “dumbbell tenement” with inner rooms opening to a central shaft that concentrated stagnant air, noises, and smells and served as repositories for garbage and as flues in a fire. Among these tenements were 350,000 interior rooms, with no windows and thousands of school sinks. Lawrence Veiller, founder of the National Housing Association, led the campaign for reform, authoring the New York Tenement House Law of 1901 (the “New Law”), which mandated courtyards in place of air shafts and required adaptations to existing structures such as replacement of all privy vaults and school sinks (latrines with water troughs to carry the waste away) with individual water closets, the waterproofing of cellar floors, and the lighting of dark hallways. Minimum maintenance expectations were also established. Enforcement was to be accomplished through construction and remodeling permits, an inspection system, and penalties for noncompliance. There was strong opposition to the New Law, but the U.S. Supreme Court upheld it on appeal in 1906.

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