tenement buildings

Tenement buildings are urban apartment structures, typically old, crowded, and in poor condition.

The term evokes late 19th and early 20th century housing for immigrants and working-class families in cities like New York—cramped rooms, shared toilets, inadequate ventilation.

Reformers documented the squalid conditions in Lower East Side tenements.

While tenement technically just means a building divided into separate residences, the phrase carries connotations of poverty and neglect.