Some crises never seem to change, and in New York, it’s our housing crisis. For those of low income, there simply isn’t enough that’s affordable. We declared a housing emergency after World War II — ...

Spying flames vomiting from a Manhattan tenement one night last week, a scavenging junkman named Roderick Good turned in an alarm. In their beds in the five-story rookery lay more than 100 tenants.

The boy showed his strong arms. It is charged against this Italian immigrant that he is dirty, and the charge is true. He lives in the darkest of slums, and pays rent that ought to hire a decent flat.

“He left an enormous legacy,” said Eoin Ó Brion, the author of the just published ‘Flats and Cottages: Herbert Simms and the ...