Kevin Schaffner PP 5344 Social Policy Dr. Edith Barrett Evolution of Low Income Housing in the United States Housing is the biggest and likely most complicated expense many Americans face. There are contracts, additional expenses associated including electricity, gas, water, and if a person owns instead of rents, the contractual obligations and the potential for loss are even more substantial. Additionally, there are external risks of housing, including the one known to many Americans, affordability. How is a person expected to enter a year contract where the expectation is that the rent or mortgage is going to be on time without the guarantee of steady income? Arguably, that answer lies in government support. Chester Hartman in, The Case for …show more content…
economy transitioned from an agrarian society to an industrial society. This transformation, known as urbanization, had a high demand for cheap labor which in turn demanded that relatively poor families lived in close proximity to factories and supply access points. Between 1840 and 1960 59.1% of the U.S. population moved into urban areas. This massive shift lead to overcrowding and bleak living conditions in urban centers (US Summary). These conditions can be described in accounts of the era such as Hard Times (1854) by Charles Dickson and How the Other Half Lives (1890) by Jacob Rils which both brought about considerable attention to the issue of housing conditions. In addition to morbid accounts of living conditions in low income neighborhoods, a philosophical revolution was also underway. A combination of ideas from the Third Great Awakening and the socialist ideas from Europe in the mid-19th century lead to an increased effort in private philanthropic efforts. This in turn lead to the New York Tenement Act of 1901, one of the first legal reforms regarding low income housing in the U.S. The act demanded certain living conditions in the construction of new tenement buildings (Lubove 1974). Reforms like the New York Tenement Act were replicated in many other U.S. cities. In 1910 housing awareness was brought to the national spotlight with the creation of the National Housing Association. Lawrence Veiller and Robert de Forest created the National Housing Association out of a need for an organization to unite many of the nation's city and state housing organizations. A private association, it nevertheless helped pave the way for cities interested in improving housing, but with little experience in doing
The novel How the Other Half Lives by Jacob Riis shocked middle and upper class Americans when it was published in 1890. Riis created a sensation when he revealed to the world, combining detailed written descriptions with graphic photographs, the horrific conditions of New York City’s tenement housing. How the Other Half Lives raised many questions, such as how and why the poor are subjected to such terrible living conditions and how that environment affects them. Riis also reveals his fears and prejudices toward certain ethnic groups as he investigates each tenement in order to find some kind of solution.
The arrival of immigrants triggered a rapid urbanization of the major cities in the United States. New buildings were built to keep up with the city’s population increase, new modes of transportation were built in order to get across the city faster, and settlement house were created The immigrants rushed into cities causing skyscrapers and tenements to be build. As a result of limited land, businesses decide to build the business up instead of out. In addition, many of the immigrants were poor, so the tenement was invented. A tenement is a building full of small apartments that would house many families. Document two shows an immigrant family living in one of these tenements. In addition, to changes in building there were also changes
In the Pulitzer prize-winning novel Evicted, sociologist Matthew Desmond follows eight families as he exposes how the lack of affordable housing perpetuates a state of poverty. He even goes so far as to assert that it is eviction that is a cause of poverty, not the other way around (Desmond 229). While this latter argument is as engrossing and it is striking, analyzing it with justice is simply not possible within the scope of this paper. Nevertheless, it is these two factors—inescapable poverty and eviction—that engender an unrelenting condition of financial, emotional, and communal instability, effectively hindering any chance of upward mobility.
In the Late nineteenth century the population was growing at a rapid pace. The country had people flooding the biggest cities in the country such as New York City and Chicago. These populations were gaining more and more people every single year and the country has to do something to make places for these people to live. The government would go on to create urban housing programs. These programs were created to make homes for these people to live in. At the time it provided a place for people to live but as the populations grew it became a more cramped and rundown area because of the large populations in one place. These reforms eventually led to these areas becoming dangerous, they were rundown, and it created a hole that was difficult for people to get out of.
“We have come dangerously close to accepting the homeless situation as a problem that we just can't solve.” - Linda Lingle. According to Linda Lingle homelessness is becoming an issue that has been a problem that is at this point unobtainable. The main causes of homelessness among Americans is the result of unemployment, low wages and unaffordable housing; the reality is that people are forced to survive in harsh environments and many are subject to alcohol and substance abuse.
As the lease of my apartment is coming to an end it had me thinking of achieving my own American Dream of home ownership but as I do my research I find the dream is far from coming true. I am sure that the issue of housing prices and rent rates are what most of us Bay Area residents talk about and debate. It is an issue that needs to be addressed by the officials of the area, city mayors, affordable housing committees, social justice activists,lawmakers, and even employers. Skyrocketing prices, low inventory, and investors’ bidding wars are not only pushing the middle and lower classes out of San Francisco and the Bay Area out but will completely eliminate them.
Compare and contrast the ways in which housing inequalities are discussed from the perspectives of social policy and criminology, and economics (TMA 02)
Have you ever noticed that while you’re driving around Austin that the homeless have become a common casualty to exhibit. I know the first thing that comes to mind is, “How ridiculous, why don’t they just get a job!”It perfectly acceptable to wonder, whether your money would go towards feeding a starving stomach or a drug addiction, therefore your generosity would be put to better use through a charity foundation or simply by offering a meal. The reality is that the majority of people who are homeless are unable to work due to certain disabilities. In other words, the best response is compassion. There is only so far we can do as a community, the major change has to come from a superior source, which is why I propose that the City of Austin ought to step up and diminish this problem. The City of Austin should build more affordable housing and assistance programs because it will help reduce homelessness.
The American dream was owning a house with a white picket fence. Now this dream is impossible. Individuals and families find it more difficult to find a decent home to rent in a suitable living area. According to Huffington Post, the hourly wage needed to afford a two bedroom apartment in California is at least $26 an hour. This is more than triple the minimum wage. Eviction, relocation, and inflation are the common keywords that associate with affordable housing. I 'm hoping to persuade you to support affordable housing for all. Today, I will be discussing, one, inflation of the housing market that needs to decrease, two, eviction from homes, three having to move to communities far from their work site.
...nt of $764 and a staggering 43% cannot afford to purchase an average priced home ($140,422). With that being said, over 8,000 families are on waiting lists for subsidized and affordable housing. Many things can prevent someone from housing such as poor credit histories, unresolved debts, and criminal backgrounds. Without affordable child care or dependable transportation, families have a greater challenge of moving towards autonomy.
On the very first page, Riis states, “Long ago it was said that ‘one half of the world does not know how the other half lives.’ That was true then. It did not know because it did not care (5).” In first-person, Riis discusses his observations through somewhat unbiased analysis, delivering cold, hard, and straightforward facts. Following the War of 1812, New York City had a population of roughly half a million, desperately in need of homes. The solutions were mediocre tenements: large spaces divided into cheaper, smaller rooms, regardless of whether or not there were windows. Some families were lucky, being able to afford the rooms with windows, while others had to live in pitch-black, damp, and tiny rooms literally in the center of the building. These tenements contained inadequate living conditions; disease murdered many citizens, causing a shortage of industrial workers. The Board of Health passed the “Tenement-House Act” in 1867,...
Efforts to confront this issue were initiated by affects of World War II. Before the war, the Great Depression devastated the United States of America causing production of homes to stop. World War II soon followed and the country switched into productions for war, which also caused a halt i...
Homelessness has not always been such a substantial issue. Homelessness “did not emerge until the 1980s” (Stergiopoulos et al., 2016, p.1). “There are between 700,000 to 800,000 people that are homeless on any given night” (Stergiopoulos et al., 2016, p.4). This issue has many involving factors; the following discussion will answer the question created by Open Arms Ministry of are there examples of effective programs, coalition, cities, communities that eliminate or attempted to eliminate homelessness? To prepare, there will be a definition of homelessness, new homelessness, usual care and a description of the issue of homelessness. This will be continued by the discussion of effective strategies that have helped end homelessness
Affordable housing in the United States describes sheltering units with well-adjusted housing costs for those living on an average, median income. The phrase usually implies to applied rental or purchaser housing within the financial means of lower-income ranges specific to the demographics of any given area. However, affordable housing does not include those living in social housing owned by government and non-profit organizations. More specifically, the targeted range for housing affordability sets below 30 percent of a household's annual income, including all applicable taxes, utility costs and home owners insurance rates. If the mean income per household breaches the 30 percent mark, then the agreed status becomes labeled as "unaffordable" by most recognizable financial institutions.
Buying and owning your home is part of the American dream. Although the dream itself has since changed, the home still remains the main focal point. Today owning a home doesn’t necessarily mean a house. People now buy duplexes, cooperative apartments, and condominiums. For some families it could take up to a couple of generations before it’s able to have the capabilities of buying a home. To many people it means a certain achievement that only comes after years of hard work. It is a life altering decision and one of the most important someone can make in their lifetime. The reasons behind the actual purchase could vary. Before anything is done, people must understand that it’s an extraneous process and it is a long term project.