Posts tagged Poverty
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Why privatization has become the public housing solution du jour
Here is how the public sector shifted responsibility for offering “a decent home and a suitable living environment” for low-income families back to the private sector. Keep reading…
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Liberty at Lorton: How a notorious prison got a new life as a housing complex
In my previous post about the Lorton Reformatory in Lorton, Virginia, I went over the history of the prison complex from its beginnings in the 1910s to its closure in 1999. In this article, I turn my focus to the long road to redeveloping the prison site and its grounds into a place that the Lorton community could be proud of and see as useful. Keep reading…
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These maps show how public housing was manipulated to segregate DC
Since it was created for white families during WWII, public housing has been used as a tool to segregate cities, and whites in power continued to use it for this purpose as more black residents moved in over the following decades. A map project from the historians at PrologueDC illustrates the ways public housing has been manipulated. Keep reading…
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How public housing was destined to fail
While the US public housing system may have started off with the intention of providing quality homes to low income and vulnerable populations, those efforts were quickly dashed by how the program was created and managed. Keep reading…
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SNAP was designed to make access to food easier for people. So why can’t people get hot meals?
In a time when a simple activity for most people, like purchasing groceries, is made more complicated by the coronavirus pandemic, social distancing, and safety concerns, people participating in public food assistance programs, like SNAP, can’t even purchase hot meals. But why? Keep reading…
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City planners need to talk about race. The lives of our residents depend on it.
Historic discriminatory urban design practices, such as redlining and restrictive zoning, continue to degrade the health of communities of color. In order to build more equitable communities, planners must better understand and acknowledge this legacy of discrimination — and actively work to undo its persisting effects. Keep reading…
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Richard Rothstein lays out the reality of government-mandated segregation in “Color of Law”
The government’s explicit role in building and enforcing segregation has been largely obscured, and it has done comparatively little to rectify the harm it’s caused to African-American communities — harm which deeply resonates into the present day. Keep reading…
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What it means for a household to be cost-burdened
When housing advocates talk about the affordability crisis, they often focus on one important statistic: the share of cost-burdened households in a city. A household is said to be cost-burdened when it pays more than 30 percent of its income toward housing expenses. As a more extreme measure, a household is said to be severely cost-burdened when it pay at least 50 percent of its income toward housing expenses. Keep reading…
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We need more public restrooms in DC. But how do we make them usable for all?
DC is inching towards increasing its number of public restrooms with the passage of a 2018 law that would add two new facilities and incentivize business owners to open their bathrooms to the public. However, many public restroom designs aren’t accessible to many of their potential users. Keep reading…
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Indoor mold can be hazardous. DC tenants want help getting landlords to treat it.
Tenants across the District have expressed concern with the city’s inaction around mold in housing, which can spark or exacerbate a plethora of health issues. Amid unanswered reports and unaddressed mold complaints, eight professionals and community members testified at a joint public hearing on December 9 about the Indoor Mold Remediation Act of 2019, which aims to improve enforcement and remediation. Keep reading…