Riis regards greed as both the primary cause of the tenement problem and the most formidable obstacle blocking reform.

If the working impoverished people in the tenements have “plagued” the city with alcohol addiction, crime, and a host of other evils, then this plague amounts to “a just punishment upon the community that gave it no other choice” (3). The problem dates to earlier in the century, when “the necessities of the poor became the opportunity of their wealthier neighbors” (8). Riis notes that in some places, to maximize profit, 10 families occupied spaces built for two. People who are impoverished “have no other place to live” and are enslaved to “exorbitant rents” (23). In the downtown tenement districts, south of 14th Street, tenants occupy once fashionable houses that have been converted to their present purpose, which is “to shelter, at as little outlay as possible, the greatest crowds out of which rent could be wrung” (29). In the “Bend” and elsewhere, the Italian tenant “submits to robbery at the hands of the rent-collector without murmur” (48).

Old World memories linger, and the plunder of tenants “has come near to making the name of landlord as odious in New York as it has become in Ireland” (64).