Due to the extremely poor conditions of the tenements and the landlords doing barely anything to help, tenants took action into their own hands and started to voice their concern. People living in the tenements started to go on strikes and protest to get the change that they wanted see. Major tenement groups in the early 1900s grouped to form the Tenants League. They attacked the heat of the tenements and the rising rents (Urban Castles). To do this they went on rent strikes and would protest outside their tenement building. Evictions did not affect their movement and growth but after WWI tenants began to fight harder against the rising rents now that there would be nowhere else to go if the could not afford to stay there. Especially the …show more content…
Three people who were very important to housing reform are Jacob Riis, Dr. John H. Griscom, and Edward T.Potter. Riis is most known for writing a book called How The Other Half Lived. This book was meant to show the rich how desperate the poor housing situation was (A History of Housing in New York City). Riis exposed how live was in tenements through photos that he went to take and with his book. Dr.Griscom also took it upon himself to enforce housing standards to protect the poor in the mid 1800s. Griscom stated that landlords have the power and resources to make the necessary changes to housing, but will not because they don’t want to go above and beyond to have their tenants be satisfied but instead want to do the bare minimum because the will not get anything of monetary value out of it (A History of Housing in New York City). This goes to show how people are more likely to but in the work necessary to help out if they get something in return. Potter approach to help fix the tenement situation was to try to fix the gridiron of Manhattan. He published a research paper that proposed a fix to the gridiron so that there would be an equal amount of ventilation and sunlight for the tenements (A History of Housing in New York City). Potter also one of many to try to also take up an architectural design to help with housing reform (A History of Housing in New York City). To do this he worked outside of mainstream architecture to make model buildings that were better made than the regular tenements. Through all this fighting for change there soon became actual change and more laws were passed to