I would like to propose starting a settlement house on the lower eastside of Manhattan. If it is approved I will name it the Manhattan Shelter. I will need funding from wealthy sponsors and charities to begin this project if it is approved. Many believe that poverty results from the laziness of the poor and poor character, but providing those less fortunate with a place to live will result in them getting an education so that they may work more efficiently and therefore help raise the economy from the depression we are experiencing. “Low earnings, irregular employment, large families, sickness and old age were the root causes of poverty in the nineteenth century rather than intemperance or idleness. By 1900 new levels of poverty were discovered …show more content…
If I receive enough money, I would like to expand and make a much larger building with many more services to offer. “The settlements taught adult education and English language classes, provided schooling for immigrants ' children, organized job clubs, offered after school recreation, initiated public health services, and advocated for improved housing for the poor and working classes” (http://www.unhny.org/about/history). English language classes will be a large part of the settlement house because of the opportunities that would arise once they can speak fluent English, such as more job options. “Settlement house workers were educated poor persons, both children and adults, who often engaged in social action on behalf of the community. In attaining their goals, the settlement house reformers had an enviable record. They had a realistic understanding of the social forces and the political structures of the city and nation. They battled in legislative halls as well as in urban slums, and they became successful initiators and organizers of reform”(http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/settlement_house.aspx). The Manhattan Shelter will have many attainable goals, such as reducing poverty, starvation, disease, and
No other place in the world could rival the US’s diversity, leading to many greats things in the US immediately, and in the long term. For example, Doc 3 shows Chinese workers in a salmon cannery, bringing along their knowledge of fish and how to prepare it. Something as small as this proves the larger idea that foreign immigrants bring along with them their traditions that make the US a more complex and interesting place to live. Due to this new diversity, places such as the “Hull House” were created to help immigrants adapt to life in the US, as well as a place to interact with other cultures. As Hilda Statt Polacheck said, “Hull House was an oasis in a desert of disease and monotony.
The Jane Addams Hull-House Museum serves as a dynamic memorial to social reformer Jane Addams, the first American woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, and her colleagues whose work changed the lives of their immigrant neighbors as well as national and international public policy. The Museum preserves and develops the original Hull-House site for the interpretation and continuation of the historic settlement house vision, linking research, education, and social
Their “large rooms were partitioned into several smaller ones, without regard to light or ventilation, the rate of rent being lower in proportion to space or height from the street; and they soon became filled from cellar to garret with a class of tenantry living from hand to mouth, loose in morals, improvident in habits, degraded, and squalid as beggary itself. ”(Riis 63-64) With Jacob Riis’s descriptive choice of words you could essentially vision the tenants that were many lived in the city. Crammed in spaces where two families could comfortably live in, ten families would live there instead.
The writings and pictures in Jacob Riis's How the Other Half Lives offer a vivid portrayal of the poor living conditions of New York's tenement houses and illustrated the necessity for progressive reform in the late 1800s. A vicious cycle held many of the tenants in its grasps through a combination of the landlords' rent prices and a lack of sustainable incomes. To Riis, the landowners looked like “tyrants that sweeten the cup of bitterness with their treacherous poison” (166). In the destitute areas, crime grew rampant, and the poor packed themselves into the tenements. Disease and illness worked adverse to any improvement of living conditions.
Annalee Allen Intro to News Writing Mr. Mike Stedham 6 March 2015 Jacob Riis In the 1890’s, there was much corruption and chaos when it came to how the underprivileged people of New York, New York lived. The tenements were in some of the poorest conditions and it seemed as though no one was willing to do anything to help these poor, unfortunate people. The government thought that it was of no concern of theirs since the wealthier people were in charge of these tenements. They did not want to be involved, since there were no laws or rules in place mandating that the government improve the housing conditions.
Stating senators will be elected by the people, making the legislation more just and diverse (Doc 4). Another way in which they could fix the poor living and working conditions was to start organizations. Reformer Jane Addams, The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets states that all workers entering factory life at a young age must have quality conditions for they are only children and administration is forgetting the terrible conditions they are being forced to do. She created the Hull House which was a settlement house to help people be successful. It would assist them with food, shelter, jobs, and
During the Great Depression, my family and I went through difficult times for about ten years. I was unemployed and couldn’t pay for our home. In result, we became homeless and we don’t know where to go. Though some families allowed us to move in together under one roof, sometimes allowing strangers in homes can bring some difficulty and stress so I declined. So, because of this we are forced to live in squatter settlements called Hoovervilles (shacks that housed millions of unemployed).
In order to do this, they created settlement houses which allowed reformers an opportunity to realize what changes needed to be made in the area. These houses were also used to hold meetings and provide free healthcare to the residents. In 1889 in Chicago, Jane Addams founded the most renowned settlement house, known as the Hull House. The majority of the residents were women who lobbied for the government to pass better construction and safety regulations, created a better process to collect garbage, and eliminated prostitution by shutting down red-light districts. While the Women's Christian Temperance League was developed to push for local, mandatory temperance education in alcohol, there were also efforts to reduce alcohol consumption by the men in the urban neighborhoods.
The Progressive Era had mainly focused on improving social and economic issues such as poverty, violence, greed, class structure, monopolies and trusts, corruption and etc. I, Jane Addams, am a middle class woman and a progressive worker who has been one of the many who have faced constant unethical social conditions that occurs along the urban streets following rapid industrialization in America. I have witnessed that the influx of immigrants who’ve migrated to America have struggled in engaging in the numerous opportunities America has to offer; due to them lacking an education and knowledge in various areas. I propose that a solution to this problem would be establishing settlement houses to where I suggest it would assist and provide social and educational services to predominantly immigrant residents to who subside in crowded streets of America. One of my closest friends, Ellen Gates Starr, and I have pondered on the idea of naming one of the many settlement houses to be named the “Hull House” where it would be located in Chicago and also provide such services to those in nearby communities and neighborhoods as well.
The poverty line in 1929 was considered to be an annual income of at least $2000. Most people,at the beginning of 1929, were making that and living happily. But, according to Frederick Lewis Allen’s, The Big Change, the US distribution of income was so uneven that 60% of the population was living in poverty. (Doc. 9). With over half of the country living in poverty, businesses had to lower prices and that caused the businesses to lose money and lay off workers, leading to even more impoverished families.
Addams describes the settlement in her book, Twenty Years a Hull-House, “A settlement is above all a place for enthusiasms, a spot to which those who have a passion for the equalization of human joys and opportunities are early attracted” (184). Addams pushed for sanitation, safe working conditions, womens rights and suffrage, tenement house regulation, child labor laws, eight hour work days, and fair wages. Jacob Riis was a mukracker and photo journalist who chronicled immigrant life in urban cities (Nguyen 6). Riis started as a police reporter/photographer in New York and used his experience to put together, “How the Other Half Lives.” It was a piece exposing the horrible lives of the immigrant working class; furthermore, the book displayed pictures of people sleeping on floor mattresses, dirty children wondering the alleys, no windows in crowded tenement houses, and kids digging through human waste in the city (Nguyen
Through the Children’s Bureau they were able to decrease infant mortality and improve the living standards of children in orphanages. The settlement houses improved healthcare and education for immigrants. This is all a result of women’s growing place in society because of the progressive
More than sixty-five percent of New York’s population lived in those tenements. Tenements were a large source of suffering for new immigrants and their families. This is mainly due to their unsanitary and overcrowded conditions. The tenement conditions were horrendous and appalling.
Groups of African-Americans and women fought to prevent destruction of their houses under the Urban Renewal Act of 1949, which gave Boston money to develop its infrastructure. Consequently, this meant older neighborhoods of Boston were slated to get demolished to make way for new residential areas. The Act “rekindled the flame of activism and protest in much of the city” (39). Groups formed such as the Urban Planning Aid and Mothers for Adequate Welfare who fought Boston officials to halt the demolitions and find other ways to improve infrastructure and their lives. Altogether, these acts helped push Boston to become a “a city much more of, by, and for its people,” according to Vrabel.
With the increased use of housing-based assistance programs being created, there is a positive outlook for homeless looking for assistance getting back on their feet by acquiring affordable housing. The ability to apply and gain benefits through state and federal programs is helping to provide food and some financial assistance to the homeless population as well as a community outreach programs being deployed in cities all over the country. New opportunities for employment and training are available for those who are homeless and looking to get back into the workforce and get off the street. The road ahead for the homeless population is, of course, paved with struggles and detours, but with the continued efforts of our country, states and communities we can work together to aid in the reduction of homelessness with the continued efforts in creating and maintaining affordable housing programs, assistance programs, and workforce development