User talk:Nsamanda

Housing and the Public
Public housing is housing provided for people with low incomes and subsidized by public funds. The property is usually owned by the government and given back to people in need of a living space with an affordable renters agreement. However, housing itself is a problem within the context of the Unites States as prices in cities across the country are increasing, and there is a rising homelessness crisis in major cities such as San Franscisco, Los Angeles, and Portland.

Within the context of City and Regional Planning, these roadblocks are called Wicked Problems because they are troublesome and distressing, as one solution may cause another problem. Some Wicked Problems include water rights, mass incarceration, and methods of solving homelessness. Currently, a large Wicked Problem in the United States, as this paper specifically focuses on California, is the lack of affordable housing that leads people to become in debt, homeless, or reliant on others for assistance. This page explore the history and complications of housing, within the public and private sector, as well as present solutions that organizations have advocated for and how they attempt to meet the needs of the public.

Historical Preservation of Public Housing in the United States
Many low-income Americans lived in tenement housing, that contained several families on each floor with less than sanitary conditions. Living in these cramped spaces, diseases became easily spread and moving became difficult because these families relied on the close proximity to their jobs. Thus, Roosevelt appointed the President’s Housing Commission in 1908 to examine low-income neighborhoods and create new ideas for improved and livable housing. Home-ownership continued to shift in the 1950-60s due to white flight and people of color remained in low-income neighborhoods while being almost fully reliant on welfare due to their low-paying jobs that came as a result of racial wage gaps. Then, in 1968, the Fair Housing Act came in order and housing became available to more people, prohibiting "discrimination concerning the sale, rental, and financing of housing based on race, religion, national origin, and since 1974, sex"

In the article Discrimination in the United States, the history of the Fair Housing Act's enforcement mechanisms are outlined as follows: "Refusal to sell or rent a dwelling to any person because of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. Discrimination based on race, color, religion or national origin in the terms, conditions or privilege of the sale or rental of a dwelling. Advertising the sale or rental of a dwelling indicating preference of discrimination based on race, color, religion or national origin. Coercing, threatening, intimidating, or interfering with a person's enjoyment or exercise of housing rights based on discriminatory reasons or retaliating against a person or organization that aids or encourages the exercise or enjoyment of fair housing rights."

Services Offered
Affordable housing is positively accepted amongst the public, but there is still a problem of housing developers and corporations’ desire for profit over people. As the cost of homes rises, neighborhoods become more expensive and lead to the displacement of a large population. It is believed that corporations take advantage of these vulnerable populations to provide cheap labor without any benefits due to the fact that they need money to live. Therefore, the creation of affordable housing not only impacts the overall living quality of life, but also job availability and resources for families. Thus, there have been multiple approaches on how to address and promote affordable housing, a few of which will be mentioned in this section. While affordable housing is difficult to attain quickly, organizations such as nonprofits are working towards this goal of housing as a human right and dealing with debates on how to address the problem. The development of non-profits directly bring into question the problems associated with housing, and try community based approaches on how to address affordability.

The academic journal, Nonprofit Housing and Neighborhood Spillovers, analyzes three arguments as to why nonprofit organizations are successful, being:

“Nonprofits are more likely to build housing that will be affordable permanently, not simply over the duration of the government subsidy,” “Nonprofits are likely to serve needier tenants” such as those of lower income, and “Nonprofits and community-based nonprofits in particular are believed to work in more distressed neighborhoods and to pay greater attention to broader neighborhood benefits” (Bratt 33). These positive aspects of the nonprofit sector are not completely accurate as there are many debates as to the influence and type of work the organizations are doing, or should not be doing.

"Southern California Association of Nonprofit Housing: SCANPH"
The Southern California Association of NonProfit Housing (SCANPH) works in correlation with the first example of the services nonprofits offer, including informing the public of the importance of affordable housing and how to be political in one’s choice for local government. The debates about the organization and the work they do continues to provide solutions and problems for communities they are assisting. The most impactful solution that SCANPH can offer is assisting local tenants with information about how to continue providing affordable housing, and working with them to prevent issues like displacement and gentrification. The tenants themselves are the most impactful solution present, where people are directly affected because they are paying someone who believes in the social and political understanding of what affordable housing means. These tensants often understand the racial segregation and probelms within thier communiteis, and choose to help change the conversation about the housing market and economy.

Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles
The Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles provides the largest amount of money for affordable housing in the city of Los Angeles, CA.

As stated on the page, funding comes from five main sources: "United States Department of Housing and Urban Development's annual operating subsidy, HUD's annual Capital Fund, Section 8 administrative fees, rent from public housing residents, and other program and capital grants from various sources." The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development, developed in 1965 by President Lyndon B. Johnson plays a large role in development projects such as housing, rental assistance, homelessness prevention, sustainability, and more. Providing funding and research programs, the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development attempts to assist people throughout the country through the creation and implementation of policy throughout the department. In alliance with different agencies such as the Federal Housing Administration and the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development works to advocate for urbanism and pubic health. Through the discussion of community planning and development, the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development contains fair housing and equal opportunity policies.

"As of January 2019, there are 36,300 homeless people in the City of Los Angeles, comprising roughly 62% of the homeless population of LA County." Therefore, the need for housing in L.A. is at an all time high. The Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles continues to search for methods to relieving the situation. Housing developers often look for other corporations for money, including non profits that provide relief thrrouhg subsidies and development planning.

Debates about Decision Making

As there comes plans for solving topics of urban development, there is frequent discussion about a rational model of decision making that continues to be used today. There are a large amount of debates surrounding this topic of decision making that impacts the daily living of people even when they do not know it. The critiuqes of the decion making process includes:

1. problems of data inefficiency + reductionalism

2. claims of professionalism

3. subjectivity, emotion, intuition

4. objective science possible

5. non-action based model / lab and research base

6. non democratic or inclusive; very top-down and elite

7. lack of accomplishment / generalized goals / non inspirational

8. fails frequently

These topics show the distrust for those making the decisions as the answers do not always work for the given area, and it is a very top-down solution to the city. As most of the decisions tend to fail frequently, there is a constant draw to the blackboard to continue making a new decision. However, these decsions keep getting made in this process because of the general beleif that these decisions are:

- based in science --> believable

- supported by academy

- basis for research funding

- supported by government and used to justify spending

- often evidence-based

- used to solve problems / justify visions

- bias for quantitative vs. qualitative research

- linked to economic outcomes / quantifiable metrics

Reflection
My Wikipedia plan for area and sector are focused on affordable housing, however they work with specific aspects of this topic. The area that I focused in is Public Housing. I first dived into the question of what is public housing, and then talked about what it looked like from the perception of city planners. The first paragraph presents an opening introduction to public housing and then housing itself as a generality. My second paragraph discusses the historic background of public housing in the United States, followed by the role that non-profits play in housing development with background information I pulled from an article that I used in my Needs Talk History essay. Finally, I talk about the services that are used in my PE organization and give a short background on the work the organization does. I wanted to focus my area on the partial generality of the work I would be doing with public housing foundations and non-profit work, as well as show the impact of the creation of public housing. For my sector, I went in a different direction with the affordable housing idea. Here, I focused more on the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development, and their impact in Los Angeles. Looking into the amount of work they do, there is still a large demographic of people that are affected negatively and Los Angeles continues to be one of the major cities with a large amount of homelessness. Therefore, there are continuing debates as to how the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development makes their decisions. I listed a few reasons as to how the public critiques their policy makers, and how there is mainly a top-down approach that is felt amongst the locals. These decision making plans still continue as the idea is supported by the federal government and this is generally one of the popular approaches to continued public house funding. My drafting contributions came in the form of including new ideas for sectors, such as including class topics that I have learned about such as inclusivity, justifications, and evidence-based approaches to the topic of affordable housing. By including the neighborhoods, and creating a place out of a space of land, there is a more successful plan of housing and community development.

Bratt, Rachel G. (2019) “The Role of Nonprofits in Meeting the Housing Challenge in the United States, Urban Research & Practice” 12:1, 7-37, DOI: 10.1080/17535069.2017.1341951

“Development of Non-Profit Housing in the United States.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 9 Jan. 2020, en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Development_of_non-profit_housing_in_the_United_States&oldid=934925534.

“Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 17 Oct. 2019, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_Authority_of_the_City_of_Los_Angeles.

“Housing Discrimination in the United States.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 16 Mar. 2020, en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Housing_discrimination_in_the_United_States&oldid=945912982.

“Los Angeles.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 9 May 2020, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles#Homelessness.

“Public Housing.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 12 May 2020, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_housing.