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affordable housing Archives - ChangingMedia

Jun 06
0

Realtors Want Housing For All

By | Homelessness, The Race to End Homelessness | 2 Comments

How do you experience homelessness? I wrote several months ago about the preferred terminology for homelessness; that “people experiencing homelessness” is a better phrase than “homeless people,” because it reminds us that homelessness is a condition – hopefully a temporary one – and not a defining characteristic. After further consideration, I think the phrase applies to all of us – even those of us who are lucky enough to have our own beds and roofs and keys to the front door. I have never experienced homelessness, but my experience with homelessness – meeting people who have lost their homes and their families and their health due to lack of affordable housing – makes me want to end this issue. I know many social workers, case managers, and shelter employees that are passionate about ending homelessness because they (we) interact with individuals experiencing homelessness every day. Sometimes I think we exist in a nonprofit bubble, believing that our peers in other lines of work cannot understand the realities of homelessness, or the importance of ending it. This is inaccurate.

For Cindy Eich, experiencing homelessness didn’t involve seeing a family member lose housing or encountering someone panhandling. As an Illinois Realtor, she started seeing not only people without homes, but homes without people. In 2011, Eich remembers “we were showing properties that were foreclosures and it was obvious that families had lived in those homes.” Motivated by the empty dwellings she saw, especially those that used to have children in them, Eich created Realtors Against Homelessness in 2011 and has since held multiple fundraisers in her community, the last of which raised $25,000.

This week in Florida, the state’s largest professional association – realtors – gathered at a conference to discuss how they could help end homelessness. As Florida hosts the third largest number of individuals experiencing homelessness, this is a crucial issues facing the state. The group has advocated for Florida legislation that supports individuals experiencing homelessness and provides more funding for rentals and home ownership.

In an era when politicians, business owners and plenty of private citizens attack and berate individuals for being homeless, it is refreshing and promising that this professional organization supports ending homelessness and is working to make that happen. People experiencing homeless are not a likely group to utilize the services of a realtor, so there is an obvious disconnect between realtors making a financial profit and helping this population. Their commitment to doing so demonstrates how important a home really is – the professionals who dedicate their careers to knowing the details of housing see how important having your own place can be, and want every person to have this as an option.

Our professional lives connect to homelessness in ways that aren’t always obvious. For one realtor, selling a foreclosed house was her experience with homelessness. For others, it may be serving homeless clients or treating homeless patients. Our experiences with homelessness are wide ranging, but until we see the end off this social issue, it will impact us all.

 

Mar 14
0

End Homelessness in the Kitchen

By | Homelessness, The Race to End Homelessness | 7 Comments

My first job was providing crying kids sticky peppermint ice cream with rainbow sprinkles. I earned less than six dollars an hour and I left each day smelling like waffle cones, but I can still craft the perfect double scoop when someone breaks out the Ben & Jerry’s.

Besides being something that we all need to survive, food is an industry most of us will work in at some point in our lives. From fast food to family style to fine dining, there are a plethora of eating options for any palate. Since every food service option employs some people, and many employ a lot of people, there is a fairly consistent job market in food production, cooking and serving. Realizing this, one San Antonio food pantry started working to train homeless individuals to work cooking and restaurant jobs.

It’s hard to overlook that the adage, “Give a man a fish, he’ll eat for a day, Teach a man to fish, he’ll eat for a lifetime” has come to life at the San Antonio Community Kitchen. The six-week class includes tips on food safety and, because all the food is donated, getting creative with your meal options. This concept has gained traction in many cities, even leading one food pantry in Salinas, California to close its doors in 2010 after twenty-five years of proving meals to the hungry. The pantry hadn’t ended hunger, but instead had decided it could better serve its population by teaching, not serving. Today, the facility is known as the Red Artichoke Culinary School, a program to teach individuals in poverty to cook at a level that will make them competitive or chef and sous-chef positions.

Why is this type of job training any different from the other types of employment coaching available to low-income job seekers? Unlike teaching someone how to dress for an interview or fix up their resume – which are both important skills –  culinary training offers both an employment edge and a boost in the individual’s personal health and wellness. Even if a person experiencing homelessness does receive food stamps (which max out in Maryland at $189 per month), most shelters and day centers don’t allow outside food. People who have lived in homelessness for an extended period of time do not have access to an oven or even a refrigerator, so food items are limited.  This leaves options that require no preparation and leave no leftovers, such as  snack foods or instant meals.

When a previously homeless person does get housing, the kitchen can feel like an intimidating place, and old eating habits can be hard to break. Demystifying cooking and food options can help someone out financially if it leads to their employment, but also personally if it can improve their health and comfort level in their new home.

 

Dec 02
0

Trouble in Techtopia

By | #SaveBmore, Social Enterprise, The Thagomizer | 4 Comments

Every city wants to create the “next Google.” Go to any start up weekend, tech happy hour, or hackathon in any city you will hear the same gospel: the tech industry can save our city. Yet examples from already established tech communities paint a less than delightful picture of the darker impact of tech fueled economic growth.

Right after I had read Lindsey’s post on the the amazing way San Francisco had come together as a community to support a child’s wish, I came across a different view of the city. An article published this week in the New York times discussed the tension boiling between old time San Francisco residents and the new techie influx. Amid higher rent prices, a 98-year-old-woman being forced from her home to make room for new money, and entire districts turned into frat neighborhoods for “tech bros,” the effect of the tech industry that worried me most was what was described in the Mission District.

In a classic example of gentrification, working-class Hispanic residents who once defined the neighborhood were being forced out by the tech elite. The celebration of Day of the Dead, instead of being a cultural celebration, had been transformed by newcomers into a boozy extension of Halloween. Residents and shopkeepers who had been there for decades were being evicted or forced out, no longer able to afford rents in the neighborhood. The culture of the district is rapidly being lost. As one performance artist described it, “One day they will wake up to an extremely unbearable ocean of sameness.”

This wasn’t the first article I read about citizens being pushed out by the new demands from a tech boom. Earlier this month NPR reported on one of the last trailer parks in Silicon Valley. With real estate being at such a premium in the area, the owners of the land want to sell this park, one of the few affordable housing options in the area, to developers. Residents will be forced to move, not only losing their homes in the process, but missing out on the public schools and being forced to have a longer commute. While perhaps this isn’t something these new city dwellers realize, by losing diversity they are losing something too in this equation. One mother of a Palo Alto student explained, “My son has gone on play dates to homes where he found out his friend didn’t have a bedroom. His friend sleeps on a couch. He didn’t even know that that was how some kids grow up. You learn what they don’t have; you learn the richness of what they do have too — the strength of their community and culture and heritage.”

When they push the natives out, they also push the history out, the culture, the weirdness, the part that makes the city unique. In this way technology doesn’t save the city, it simply takes it over. City natives become refugees, forced to find a new home, and not receiving a whole lot of benefit from “the next Google.” This embrace of techies as the saviors of cities is another shining example of what I call Hipster Trickle Down theory. Basically it is the idea that importing bright new creative types whether they be artists, developers, or designers, will lift up the city for everyone. Yet what these Californian examples prove, it does a better job of pushing out people than it does uplifting them.

Can this change? Is there a way of using the technology industry to help everyone in the city? Can tech benefits reach those historically marginalized communities who sometimes sit on the other end of the digital divide? Certainly here in Baltimore we have some programs trying to train Baltimore youth for new opportunities in tech and design. Yet I think we need more than that. We need a city that prioritizes growing from within over looking for new economic saviors. We need policies that focus first on communities struggling the most with poverty and unemployment, and do not wait for the money of tech billionaires to trickle down.

Yes, Baltimore, and cities around the country need more profitable industries but we need these economic behemoths to combine forces with the city residents, not cast them aside. This doesn’t mean some donations to schools or a few hackathons, but a real intention to infuse the people and place of the city into their company, and to work together with the community to make the community better. It’s time for tech companies to ask not what cities can do for them, but what they can do for cities.

Jun 06
0

Couch Surfing: The Last Stop

By | Homelessness, The Race to End Homelessness | 2 Comments

I have this facebook friend — one of those people I used to know and do not keep in touch with much — who last week updated his status to ask if he could crash at someone’s place. “Help” he wrote, “I’m about to be literally homeless in New Jersey.”

At first, I was infuriated. How dare he pretend to be undergoing the same plight as the people I know who are experiencing homeless? As a middle class, college-educated guy I went to high school with, he couldn’t possibly be “really” homeless.

Then I did my research. As it turns out, couch surfing is a lot closer to homelessness than I originally realized. The 2012 Annual Report to Congress named “doubling up,” or living with a friend or relative as the most common previous housing situation for people entering homelessness. While most people can offer a guest room or at least a pillow for a night or two, many cannot afford a permanent house guest. Furthermore, living in such close quarters puts stress on even the best of relationships. For these reasons, a couch might be the last stop for someone before becoming homeless.

Does this mean everyone who finds themselves caught between a lease for a few days is entering the homeless system? Certainly not. Still, it is dangerous to believe that we or the people we know are immune from this experience. In the 2013 State of Homelessness in America Report, The National Alliance to End Homelessness stated that economic need has driven people to double up at higher rates in 39 states. From 2010 to 2011, New York State saw an increase of 26 percent in the number of households that doubled up, while Massachusetts rates increased by 25 percent. The ten states that saw a decrease in doubling up were mostly southern states, but also included Alaska and Kansas, both with double digit declines. Generally, those areas with lower property values did not see the staggering increases that the rest of the country experienced. This suggests that even when working, many individuals are unable to pay for rooms or apartments at the average market rate.

mapMap: The National Alliance to End Homelessness

Because the 2013 State of Homelessness Report uses data from 2011, some newer studies suggest this trend has started to correct itself as the economy improves. While moving off the couch is certainly an improvement, this group represents a “hidden homeless” population, because they are more difficult to count in homeless censuses or Point-In-Time counts for the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

As the economy improves — or as tensions run high with housemates, this population will begin to look for affordable housing. It is dangerous to assume that the current demand for housing is an accurate representation of the need for such homes. In 2009, the need for affordable housing outnumbered the amount of safe units by 5.5 million. Four years later, the situation has not improved. There are many people who have been waiting in the wings — friends’ spare rooms, basements, and living rooms — for a place of their own.

Affordable housing has never been prevalent enough or affordable enough for everyone, but it is more crucial now than ever. There is a large group of people that used to live independently, and likely have some income, who are ready and willing to become tenants and homeowners. They just need properties at the right price to let them do so.

My facebook friend found a place for the night and has since moved into a new apartment. Others, though, are still waiting for a place they can truly call home.