The Unwanted's Guide to US Housing Policy

摘要

In 1913, social reformer Lawrence Veiller wrote that sharing one's home with lodgers is "one of the most serious housing evils encountered in any country." To my knowledge, Veiller never met my family, yet he felt qualified to vilify them and their living arrangements. They were his "evil" people. I grew up on stories of the Cossacks riding through Rostov, Russia, on their horses, whipping any Jew in their way, dragging others behind. Around 1908, my 16-year-old grandfather escaped the pogroms and emigrated to America with his aunt, uncle, and toddler cousins. An almost-grown boy living with young children who are not his siblings? Unsavory, to Veiller and his ilk, even if they were first cousins. Lodgers, be they blood family, friends from one's hometown, or paying strangers, were deemed a disruption to the sanctity of the nuclear family and contributors to the supposed inherent immorality of low-income tenement dwellers.