Question

Today, what is a tenement? It is generally a brick building from four to six stories high on the street, frequently with a store on the first floor which, when used for the sale of liquor, has a side opening for the benefit of the inmates and to evade [to escape or avoid] the Sunday law; four families occupy each floor, and a set of rooms consists [is made up of] of one or two dark closets, used as bedrooms, with a living room twelve feet by ten. The staircase is too often a dark well in the center of the house, and no direct through ventilation is possible, each family being separated from the other by partitions. Frequently the rear of the lot is occupied by another building of three stories high with two families on a floor. It no longer excites even passing attention, when the Sanitary police report counting 101 adults and 91 children in a Crosby Street House....Or when a midnight inspection in Mulberry Street unearths a hundred and fifty flodgers' [roomers, or boarders] sleeping on filthy floors in two buildings.... The tenements today are New York, harboring (sheltering] three-fourths of its population.... I 1.

How does the author describe living conditions in the tenements? Use evidence from the text in your response.​

Answer 1

The living conditions of tenements were dire and abonimable.

Step-by-step explanation:

The given excerpt is taken from How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New York, written by Jacob Riis. The book gives details about the living conditions of people in the slums of New York City.

In the given excerpt, Riis is drawing our attention to the poor living conditions of tenements. He talks that how people lived in very small rooms and filthy floors.

The details from the text are:

"It no longer excites even passing attention, when the Sanitary police report counting 101 adults and 91 children in a Crosby Street House....Or when a midnight inspection in Mulberry Street unearths a hundred and fifty flodgers' [roomers, or boarders] sleeping on filthy floors in two buildings."