The “Tenement Problem” in Chicago, Coursework Example

Visiting the Irish Hunger memorial, the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, and Elis Island provide me with an experience that expanded my view about public health and its importance.  The Lower East Side Tenement Museum, is five-story brick tenement historic site, where an estimated 7,000 migrants, from over 20 countries, lived between 1863 and 1935. The trials and conflicts these individuals faced impacted much of the housing and public health laws that exist today. The Irish Hunger Memorial is a historic memorial located in Manhattan, New York, designed in memory of the Great Irish Famine, which killed more than a million Irelanders between 1845 and 1852, and drove many Irish to migrate to New York City. A large number of these migrants resided in the tenement houses. Ellis Island, served as the Upper New York Bay port where immigrants entered the country and had to undergo an interview process and inspection.

Between 1892 and 1954, Ellis Island represented the most active immigration inspection station. All of the experiences combined, between the three historic sites provide an in depth look at what it must have been like to have to flee one’s home to avoid starvation, only to arrive at a country and risk being sent back for not passing inspection, and then have to survive in an over-crowded living situation riddled with crime and disease. It demonstrates the importance of public health and provides strong learning point for anyone in the clinical profession to keep in mind.

In some ways conditions have changed, but for the most part the tenement houses are still have the same stigma many years following the tenement housing act of 1901. They also have the same risk of over population, crime, and inclination towards mass sickness and disease that they had in years prior. While there are development projects seeking to bring higher scale housing nearby that can uplift the communities near tenements and potentially result in more jobs and higher economic status for the residents, within the real estate market, it is considered a hindrance to sell a home located near a tenement housing project. This makes it incredibly difficult to sustain the health and socioeconomic well-being of the residence without tearing these tenements down. The problem is that tearing them down without producing affordable housing with the same capacity to house low income and migrant populations defeats the purpose of tearing them down in the first place.

How did the tenement residents contribute to the creation of public health?

Tenement residents contributed to the creation of public health through inciting the Tenement house act. They did this by proving access to photographers and reporters to document their living conditions which were in turn utilized as support for protests. The protests ultimate drove public officials to make changes. All of the exposure, which tenement residence granted to journalists and photographers, forced public officials to pay closer attention to the risk of contagious disease caused by multi-family dwellings like tenements.  These were sicknesses like, “Diphtheria, typhoid, cholera, smallpox, and yellow fever” all of which were common in tenements as well as nearby  neighborhoods (Garb, 2003)

What role does nursing play in today’s public health system?

Nursing plays a substantial role in today’s public health. This is especially true due to the fact that most people acquiring public health have limited funds or access to private care; which means, they will have reduced time with doctors, making nurses the last source of information and education of proper health practices.

In C.J. Hughes’s New York times article on tenement housing in the modern day, he talks about a real-estate development project seeking to uplift the tenement housing communities by building upscale high class housing across the street and nearby tenements. Within the article, many of the contemporary issues and views relating to tenement housing reveal that while there is some progress, very little has changed. The author notes that, “public housing is certainly not crime-free. Certain complexes have slightly higher crime rates than their neighborhoods as a whole, police data shows. But crime rates are hovering near historic lows everywhere in the city, including at public housing developments, a trend that developers say is helping fuel their newfound interest” (Hughes, 2015). The author points out that crime is near historic lows everywhere in New York, but he is also keen to admit that crime is much higher within the tenement housing projects. He goes on to suggest that the tenements have communities encapsulated within the walls of their buildings that often function separately from the outside world. In fact, he states they are their own world, which explains higher crime rates within tenements than one might see on the street.

When talking to a real-estate agent seeking to rent the newly developed units structured to motivate wealthier residents to move near tenement houses, Hughes notes that most individuals avoided renting out a location near tenement housing simply due to the loss in property value. The author attributed this to the stigma people share for tenement house that has sustained since the late 1800’s. The article does conclude by providing some hope for the future, when the author states that in spite of the fact that people are still wary to rent out near tenement houses, “I do think we’re dealing with a whole new generation of people today, and their values are in a different place, a better place”’ (Hughes, 2015). She said this marks the trend of new developments coming to traditionally deprived and neglected regions of New York, which can only result in a higher scale metropolitan atmosphere near tenement housing projects.

When visiting the Tenement Museum, it is standard to have a guide provide a mock interview so visitors can experience what the migrants had to endure to enter the country. The way this situation expanded my professional growth is that connected me to the history of public health and how knowledge within the clinical practice developed through major local and national mistakes like the tenement and migration issue.

In sum, Some areas I think I still need to grow in concern solutions for these types of issues. It’s easy to see in hindsight many of the complications that occurred, but as the world becomes more technologically dependent and in many ways more compact, it’s also easy to see how similar situations can arise.

References

Garb, M. (2003). Health, morality, and housing: the “tenement problem” in Chicago. American journal of public health, 93(9), 1420-1430.

Hughes, C.J. (2015) ‘When public housing is across the street’ The New York Times, 1-2