Building the Dream: A Social History of Housing in America

“Home improvement” for the urban poor, like “home improvement” for the middle class itself, was considered the direct route to virtue; bad home environments were the inevitable road to despair.

A staunch refusal to accept the necessity of urban life for most workers led reformers to believe that the suburbs and countryside offered solutions.

The breakdown of social organization and family ties was considered an inevitable result of crowding.  The stable, elaborate social networks of ethnic ghettos escaped most of these observers, many of whom still blamed the poor for their misery.