Guest editors’ introduction to the special issue on housing and health

Abstract

Introduction Since the early 19 century, many communities in the United States and Europe have recognized the connection between housing and health. Within urban areas, industrial development grew rapidly, and tenement housing conditions deteriorated due to overcrowding and housing age (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention & U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, 2006). Most health professionals were concerned with the spread of contagious diseases, such as cholera, smallpox, and typhus (Jacobs & Hershovitz, 2011). Thus, many municipalities, including New York City, established housing codes and design standards to improve these plighted conditions. One of first prominent American public health officials to advocate for a housing code was Dr. John H. Griscom who was hired by the City of New York in 1845 to investigate mortality and disease among workers and low-income families. Other housing reformers were Edward Potter, Ernest Flagg, Isaac Newton Phelps Stokes, Grosvenor Atterbury, Henry Atterbury Smith, Andrew J. Thomas, Clarence Stein, Henry Wright, Frederick Akcerman, Lawrence Veiller, Edith Elmer Wood, Catherine Bauer Wurster, and Mary Kingsbury Simkovitch (Plunz, 2016). Yet others were Jacobs Riis who reported about the poor living conditions of immigrant workers in his book How the other Half Lives (Riis, 1971). These efforts lead to recommendations to establish New York City’s municipal health department in 1866, the first municipal health department in the U.S., and to pass the New York City Tenement House Act of 1867, the first municipal housing code in the nation (Garb, 2003; Hoffman, 1998; Proscio, 2004). This law required minimum ventilation standards and connections to sewer and fire escapes, among other regulations (Hoffman, 1998). However, the Tenement House Act of 1867 was not enforced and still permitted construction of air shafts that were considered hazardous. Thus, reformers continued to push for passage of updated Tenement House Acts in 1879, 1887, 1895, 1901, and 1919 to address the many weaknesses and weak enforcement (Hoffman, 1998). For example, the Tenement House Act of 1901 (“New Law”) established strict standards to mitigate the problems of overcrowding, apartment fires, poor ventilation, and unsanitary conditions, and became a model code for many other communities (Garb, 2003; Hoffman, 1998). Today, housing is still fundamental to people’s quality of life and has a direct impact on their health and well-being (Basolo, 1999). Poor housing conditions may positively and negatively impact one’s health. In the case of the latter, interventions are needed (Health