If the Americans, with their love of individual cases that started the big events, were to talk about how the idea of social housing began in the United States, they would surely remember Christmas 1889, when Scribner’s Magazine published an article by journalist Yakov Riis entitled “How the Other Half Lives”. The article on New York City slums, the backside of a prosperous city, has long placed the plight of the poor on the political agenda.
