Amsterdam being a heavily industrialized and densely urbanized city became also a hub in which lots of progressive socialist ideas sparked as a call for solidarity and cooperation among the members of the working class. Initially, workers in the city were housed in shacks at extortionate prices. The houses had no sewage systems, bathrooms or running water. In 1844, Amsterdam clergyman Otto Heldring (1804-1876) preached for a solution in his manifest about poverty. Eight years later he founded the first Dutch housing association: The Society for the Workers' Class in Amsterdam. The emerging labor movement and socialism also made their mark on nineteenth-century social housing. Workers wanted to build and manage their homes through cooperatives. The Construction Company for the Acquisition of Private Houses in Amsterdam, founded in 1868, is such initiative and a first sign of Communism in the Netherlands.