Final answer:
The overpopulation of ghettos during the Holocaust was due to Nazi policies of segregation and forced confinement of Jewish populations, while tenement overpopulation resulted from poverty and the need for cheap housing among immigrants and workers. Both situations were aggravated by systemic issues like environmental racism and residential segregation.
Step-by-step explanation:
Overpopulation in Ghettos and Tenements
The overpopulation of ghettos during the era of the Holocaust, as well as the overcrowded conditions in tenements, can be attributed to forced segregation and poverty respectively. The Nazis created ghettos as a way to confine and segregate Jewish populations, enclosing them with barbed wire and subjecting them to inhumane living conditions. Places like the Warsaw Ghetto were severely overpopulated, designed for hundreds of thousands but forced to accommodate over 400,000 people. Poor sanitation, limited food rations amounting to 600-800 calories per day, and rampant disease were common, leading to the deaths of approximately 500,000 people.
Similarly, tenements housed desperate, impoverished workers and immigrants in overcrowded, unsanitary conditions. Historically, ghettos and tenement areas have also been subject to environmental racism, where social ills and civic disamenities were concentrated. The Irish and Greeks formed the Early Northern ghetto, and these areas of poverty were often ethnically or racially homogenized due to migration patterns and systemic restrictions.
In both cases, the severe overpopulation was a result of deliberate policies and economic circumstances that left these populations with few other choices for habitation.