User:Am0ria1/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Homelessness in California and Housing in the United States

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose these articles because they provide information regarding the main sector WDDC works in. Housing policy, both in the United States as well as in California specifically, impact the operations within WDDC. Homelessness in California identifies the problem WDDC attempts to ease, and is focused within the same space. Housing in the United States discusses housing as a broad topic, as opposed to housing as a crisis. These focuses interact with one another within WDDC, and it is important to understand both the issue of homelessness, and the sector it exists in, in order to reduce the number of people living without safe and secure housing.

Evaluate the article
Homelessness in California

Lead

The introduction of this article does not clearly identify the topic of homelessness, but rather begins with statistics regarding how many people are without shelter. Neither the phrase ‘homelessness’ or ‘without shetler’ are clearly defined, despite their frequent use, and the parameters for the data given is not discussed. The lead also fails to include a description of the sections within the article.

Content

This article does provide information on all major aspects of homelessness within California, and does not significantly prioritize or neglect any aspects. The information is up to date, mostly including evidence within the past 5 years. All content is relevant.

Tone and Balance

For the most part, this article remains neutral. It does not appear to be heavily biased, but at one point, within the section of climate, an unsupported claim is made. Here, the author makes the claim that because of California’s relatively mild climate, individuals experiencing insecure housing do not need to prioritize finding permanent shelter as urgently as individuals in places with more extreme climates. No information is given to support this claim, and is a statement with bias. Aside from this comment, the article is relatively neutral.

Sources and References

There are few moments in which facts are presented without a citation, but overall, the article provides a source for each statement. The sources are typically current and credible, including a wide variety of authors and data.

Organization and writing quality

The writing is both clear and formal. The article is organized very well; each new topic is relevant to the one prior, and there are clearly defined subsections within larger sections, making the focus of each section easy to identify and comprehend.

Images and Media

The article does include appropriate and useful images, but they are poorly captioned. Little detail is given, and the language used is insensitive to the people or subjects in the image.

Talk page discussion

Discussions among Wikipedia editors find this article to be useful for those seeking an overview of housing in California. The article discusses homelessness a bit more broadly than the discourse of homelessness in GPP. This is because our class focuses on the specific programs and policies that impact housing through the viewpoint of international and national poverty. GPP has a very institutional and intersectional approach to understanding homelessness, while this article is only providing an overview of housing within California, and some of its main causes.

Overall impressions

This article provides a detailed overview of homelessness. It includes some of the historical causes of homelessness within California, as well as some of the attempts of assisting those experiencing homelessness or housing insecurities. I believe the topic could be approached with more sensitive language. Additionally, some of the information is not supported by credible evidence and should be removed. For the most part, this article is clear and credible.

housing in the united states

Lead

The lead section of this article presents the topic of housing, but in an unclear, unstructured way. The introduction gives housing statistics, while name dropping a “crisis in housing,” without providing further information. There is not a description of the article’s other sections, and includes more details than necessary.

Content

The main purpose of this article is difficult to pinpoint, and therefore I am not entirely sure what information is relevant and what is not. Each topic is an aspect of housing, but each feels too shallow to be considered the main focus of the article. For example, the discussion of housing material seems unrelated to housing as an economic sector or as an area of politics, but is relevant to housing in itself. I believe the content is not well balanced, and does not equally address the important aspects of housing adequately.

Tone and Balance

This article is relatively neutral. It does not present an opinion, and gives factual information on most of the important areas of the topic. The section of homelessness gives very little information, and this insufficiency could be taken as a bias that homelessness is not an issue related to housing as an economic sector. To my understanding, this is not an issue of bias, but one of imprecision.

Sources and References

The statistics and facts referenced are not embedded within the text, making the article seem less supported than it otherwise would be. For example, statistics are given without any framing information, making them appear as weak evidence. The information is also a bit outdated, often citing statistics and studies from between 5-10 years ago. There is a lot of new research available on the optic of housing, specifically within the United States, and this article should be made up to date with those new sources.

Organization and writing quality

The organization of the article is good - there is a clear connection between different sections of the article, and each new section is clearly defined. However, there is a rather poor quality of writing; sentences are simple and are undetailed, and the main argument of the article and each section is difficult to find.

Images and Media

The article does have images, and they are related to housing. However, the images are poorly captioned and poorly placed. Most notably, there is an image showing the structure and composition of a building under the section regarding housing supplies and shortages. These topics are not connected, and it would make much more sense for the image to be relocated into the section of construction.

Talk page discussion

Other commenters are discussing the relationship between housing, poverty, and policy analysis. There are discussions of people who also found this article underwhelming in specific details or evidence, and does not present a clear topic. This article differs from the ways we have discussed housing because it mostly focuses on the physical structures of houses and living spaces, as opposed to housing as an area of political and economic discourse, or as a human right.

Overall impressions

I think this article failed to capture all of the important areas of housing, as well as failing to describe any of the nuances or complications that are involved with housing in the United states. This article would be stronger if it included more specific information within each section, and if it used more sensitive language when discussing houseless individuals.