...Public Housing in Urban Communities Abstract In this paper I will be discussing the many aspects of the public housing authorizes. Working for the Jersey City Housing Authority, I see first hand the many problems that are going on and also living in public housing I have seen the many ups and downs as well. For example, the budget cuts that are going on throughout the United States are causing more public housing to loose funding and are causing them to down size in staff and housing as well. Many of the public housing sites in the United States are privatizing because they don’t have the funding and staff to manage these sites that are considered to be severely distressed. What is public housing? According to the U.S Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD): Public housing was established to provide decent and safe housing for eligible low-income families, the elderly, and persons with disabilities. Public housing comes in all size and types, from scattered single family houses to high rise apartments for elderly families. There are approximately 1.2 million households living in public housing unites, managed by some 3,300 HAs. However, over the past few years public housing has changed. For example, there are less funding for public housing and now a lot of the public housing sites all over the United States are being privatized. In 1980, many changes started to occur in...
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...Hutchison, Gail Radford, and Kenneth Jackson, chronologically describe the progression of the United States housing system, and the contexts surrounding it, through the first half of the 20th century. Hutchison argues that the efforts of Herbert Hoover, who was the 31st President of the United States and a former Secretary of Commerce, in reforming the U.S. housing policy are largely overlooked, partly because his name evokes the image of “Hoovervilles”; however, it can not be neglected that under his leadership, the suburban ideal, a whimsical notion that permeated nationwide during the interwar period, became an integral aspect of the American identity. This, in turn, helped the subsequent leaderships cement federal programs that further improved the American housing system....
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...Concept Paper: New Orleans Post-Katrina December 8, 2013 New Orleans post-Hurricane Katrina Hurricane Katrina, which hit the southeast United States in late August of 2005 was one of the costliest and deadliest hurricanes in United States history. The city of New Orleans was arguably hit the hardest by the hurricane. The objective of this paper is to analyze the link between economic, political, and social conditions in New Orleans prior to Hurricane Katrina and the conditions in New Orleans post-Katrina. Although natural disasters are an inevitability, the human suffering that citizens faced in New Orleans immediately following Katrina were largely avoidable, the result of a lack of adequate evacuation planning and massive governmental negligence. Furthermore, it was no accident which people suffered the most in the aftermath of Katrina. Financial, political, racial, and social disparities in New Orleans long before Katrina dictated who would be most affected after Katrina, both immediately and years after the hurricane. Rebuilding efforts, just like the evacuation, have tended to favor the rich and White and neglect the poor and Black. Pre-Katrina New Orleans was disproportionately Black and poor relative to the rest of the United States. According to 2000 U.S. Census data, Blacks made up 12.3% of the nation’s population while Whites made up 75.1% of the nation’s population (U.S. Census, 2000b). In contrast, the city of New Orleans was 28.1% White and 67.3% Black...
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...dinner ready on the table, a bed with fresh linens awaited your tired and heavy eyes, and for the rest of the evening and into the night you slept on a pillow of dreams. This is in essence the American dream is it not? To have the basic needs that to some may come as a surprise, many Americans do not have. According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, “In January 2014, there were 578,424 people experiencing homelessness on any given night in the United States” (National Alliance to End Homelessness, 2015). Many people would be in agreement that the above noted agenda is fairly normal; shelter, food, clothing, education, and family are all blessings and amenities that we take for granted but nonetheless are things that every individual deserves to have. Unfortunately, these are things that many people must suffer without. Scholarly research that spans over the course of two decades has continually and firmly established the emergence and persistence of indigent and homeless individuals in the United States. Our growing understanding of homelessness comes from literature that emphasizes characteristics of the homeless and the factors that can be held responsible. Unfortunately, this research indicates that homelessness is a product of the individual or his or her characteristics and not due to structural or community circumstances. If the literature where to...
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...HOUSING AS A SOCIAL PROBLEM The literature on economic development abounds with references to the ‘social’ nature of housing requirement. This phrase is used to distinguish the housing sector from other capital intensive sectors of developing economies such as manufacturing. The implication, which is often made very explicit, indeed, is that while there is no ‘economic’ need for housing investment since the market demand for it appears very weak, it ultimately must be provided in order to solve a “social problem.” According to Smith (1970), housing sector is regarded as a drag upon the process of economic growth. While it is admitted that housing must be provided or improved eventually, many national economic development programmes regard housing as a form of investment eminently able to be postponed. The longer it can be put off, the reason goes, the better the result for the nation as a whole. The big question How does housing come to be excluded from the category of ‘economic good’s’ so that it must be bestowed as a kind of social security benefit? Housing as a ‘social good’ is not a universal concept. There are portions of the world in which the satisfaction of demand for housing and housing improvement, is a rewarding private business which does not lack eager participants and which seems to produce, as in the United States, a general level of housing welfare which is widely envied. Nevertheless, in many parts of the world, housing is regarded as a demand...
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...sanctions, the President of the United States, George Hebert Walker Bush, along with the support of the U.S Congress and the United Nations, decided to declare war on Iraq. During his declaration of war speech, Bush expressed that It was a forceful choice, as there was no other way left but to drive Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait with force (pitythefool, 2008). As a result, the coalition led by the U.S won the war in a short time period. However, were the overall effects of the 1991 Persian Gulf War positive or negative for the United States? Political Perspective The 1991 Persian Gulf War had several positive impacts for the U.S from a political perspective. The first Persian Gulf War was not only limited to Iraq and Kuwait. It was also an issue of high political importance for the United States. One of the reasons why the region was so important to the U.S is because the U.S depended on Kuwait for the access of cheap oil. By trying to conquer Kuwai, Saddam Hussain was a direct threat to the economic ties between the U.S and Kuwait. Furthermore, the U.S was afraid that Saddam’s territorial expansion would not stop with Kuwait but would continue into Saudi Arabia (Kimmel, 1998), which is also rich in oil reserves. Thus entering the war, the U.S maintained the positive relations in the region with countries of vast oil reserves while securing their future of oil imports. A significant reason why the U.S entered the war is because the United States believed that the outcome of...
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...found yourself wondering how you’re going to pay rent or a mortgage payment this month? Have you had to rely on outside sources to help supplement your food and utility expenses? In 2012, over 5.4 million workers left the job market entirely (Folks, 2013) and are now facing housing crises. As the demand for affordable housing continues to grow as adults are unable to find work, many Americans are facing homelessness and have no affordable housing available to them. All across America, more people are finding themselves homeless. Whether in big cities or small urban towns, the homeless rate continues to grow as the inability to pay for affordable housing grows. The number of people paying more than fifty percent (50%) of their income toward rent increased by more than six percent (6%) from 2009 to 2010. The United States Housing and Urban Development (HUD) classify those paying that high of a percentage as “severely housing cost burdened”. In a survey conducted by the Low Income Housing Information Service, more than 17.6 million households with children experience at least one major housing problem, meaning that one out of every two households with children in this country experience an issue with housing (Kaufman, 2013). Per The National Alliance to End Homelessness (2012) the national rate of homelessness was 21 homeless people per 10,000. Nearly four in ten of those homeless are unsheltered, living on the streets or in cars, abandoned buildings or other places not intended...
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...Community and Public Health Nursing Reflection Cynthia Clayton NUR/405 January 14, 2012 Sandra Winters Community and Public Health Nursing Reflection Community and public health nursing provide health education, care management and primary care to individuals and families who are members of vulnerable populations and high risk groups. Public health nurse integrate community involvement and knowledge about the entire population with personal clinical understandings of the health and illness experiences of individuals and families within the population. Community and public nurse focus on the prevention of illness, injury or disability, the promotion of health and maintenance of the health of the populations, they work with communities, target health promotion and disease prevention, they act as teachers, counselors and plays an important role in preventing wide spread illness and disease. Community and public health nurses’ goal is to promote, preserve, and maintain the health of populations through the delivery of personal health services to individuals, families, and groups, and also the prevention of disease and disability, to promote and protect the community as a whole. According to Stanhope & Lancaster (2012), nursing has numerous roles including identifying vulnerable individuals and families through outreach and case findings, encouraging vulnerable groups to obtain health services, developing programs that respond to their needs and teaching vulnerable individuals...
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...American society. The Great Migration of the early twentieth century was a symbolic beacon of hope for African Americans leaving their homes in the rural South to a new land of promise in the urban North. While this migration created vast amounts of opportunity for African Americans that could have not existed in the Jim Crow-era South, the movements of these people would carry the racial divisions and hostilities of society to the level of a national plight. Northern whites implemented various practices in order to manipulate urban housing markets in the effect of restricting the residential mobility of African Americans and to confining African Americans to undesirable urban neighborhoods, and therefore setting the nature of race relations in northern communities and leading to the national development of twentieth century urban ghettos. In effect of this mass migration, racially motivated actions of individual American citizens, private housing institutions,...
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...Homelessness in America Overview Homelessness in America is a particularly complex problem, vulnerable to changing political realities, demographic shifts, and seismic cultural events such as the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Researchers and policy advocates have debated nearly every facet of the phenomenon, from the number of homeless to the causal factors to solutions for homelessness (Hodges, 2010). Each year, more than 3 million people experience homelessness, including 1.3 million children. According to national studies, even more Americans are at risk of homelessness. The impact of homelessness on families and children is devastating. Millions of low-income American households pay more than 50 percent of their income on rent when estimates say the figure should be no more than 30 percent (Surveys/Studies/Stats, 2012). There are several situations that may lead to homelessness but some of the more common reasons are: a missed paycheck, a health emergency, or an unpaid bill. These will create a crisis, pushing people out of their homes and in to homelessness. Despite diverse causes, almost all forms of homelessness are tied to poverty (Karger & Stoesz, 2010). Although there are policies to govern the issue of homelessness, there is room for reform and amendments in the legislation. Definition The level of significance we ascribe to homelessness very much depends on how the term is defined. In conducting the first census of the homeless in 1933, sociologist...
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...Introduction: The global financial crisis of 2008-2009 began in July 2007 when a loss of confidence by investors in the value of securitized mortgages in the United States resulted in a liquidity crisis that prompted a substantial injection of capital into financial markets by the United States Federal Reserve, Bank of England and the European Central Bank. In September 2008, the crisis deepened, as stock markets worldwide crashed and entered a period of high volatility, and a considerable number of banks, mortgage lenders and insurance companies failed in the following weeks. Scope The crisis in real estate, banking and credit in the United States had a global reach, affecting a wide range of financial and economic activities and institutions, including the: Overall tightening of credit with financial institutions making both corporate and consumer credit harder to get; Financial markets (stock exchanges and derivative markets) that experienced steep declines; Liquidity problems in equity funds and hedge funds; Devaluation of the assets underpinning insurance contracts and pension funds leading to concerns about the ability of these instruments to meet future obligations: Increased public debt public finance due to the provision of public funds to the financial services industry and other affected industries, and the Devaluation of some currencies (Icelandic crown, some Eastern Europe and Latin America currencies) and increased currency volatility, Background ...
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...http://referaty-seminarky.cz/housing-in-the-usa/ Housing in the USA Americans are a mobile nation. The average owner stays in a house only five years, before moving somewhere else. Due to low interest rates, the majority of families in the USA own their own homes. Usually these are separate houses with yards. Houses in US are still very inexpensive compared to Europe. There is a dark side to families moving so much, and such distances. Family ties are not nearly so strong in the US as in other countries. Some parents and grown children living on opposite coasts may only visit each other twice a year. LIVING IN THE CITY Groups of owned apartments in one building (called “condominiums“ or “condos“) are not so popular as in the rest of the world. Usually they only are common in downtown areas. They are popular with people who want to buy their own home but don’t want to maintain a yard or a garden. Condominiums often have a lot of communal amenities, such as laundry room, swimming pools and fitness rooms. Young people, especially when they are single, normally can’t afford to buy a house or a condo right away. They usually live in rented apartments. There are apartments in older buildings, especially in big cities, but there are also a lot of modern apartment complexes. These apartments are almost always furnished, usually very nicely. AMERICAN HOUSES Houses vary greatly, but the dominant style of the last 30 years has been the ranch-style house. Houses are usually made...
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...There is no doubt that the United States has a set of serious problems. However, what stood out to me is where these problems came from. Several of the problems faced in the United States originated from residential segregation and have become inconvenient to handle. With the diverse background, the United States caters to, adding unfamiliarity with fellow citizens of various racial backgrounds would help challenge the negative ideologies towards public issues. Forms of racial exclusions have corrupted American politics, permitting leaders to mobilize individuals based on their racial appeals. Correspondingly, the existence of tenement housing acts as a reminder that the history of inequality has been present in the United States for quite...
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...rise in homelessness is significant, hitting 3.5 million people who experience the situation in every year. Out of the 3.5 people experiencing homelessness, 35% of them are families that include children. The families in the United States are the fastest growing segment of homeless individuals. The military veterans who are homeless constitute 23% of the total people who are homeless in the United States. Of the 3.5 million homeless people, 25% are minors who are aged below 18 years (U.S. Census Bureau 2014). The minors become homeless when their families or the caretakers become homeless. Some of the homeless children lack paternal families and may have run away from the orphanage and children homes to make lives on their own. The statistics showed that 30% of the homeless people had experienced domestic violence and 25% suffered from mental illnesses. In the urban settings, some individuals experience homelessness for an average duration of eight months. It is worth noting that the homelessness crisis is not particular to any race or ethnic group in the United States. The homeless comprises of an equal distribution of about 40-41% of African Americans and white. The African Americans and the whites make the majority of the population in the United States. A...
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...order to reach a solution. Social problems are very much complex that it threatens the values of society. The cause and the solutions are responsibilities of the society Affected Population The meaning of being homeless in the United States helps define who is able to receive shelter and assistance from health and social service providers. In order to live a normal life requires having a home to live in. Yet people with no home and unable to afford anything can be found in all countries. The main reason is the individual cannot get the housing loans or welfare accessible to others. The causes of homelessness can be caused by family altercations or tragedy (or prison), or even a natural disaster. The larger proportions of homeless parents who are separated from their children in the US and the larger number of families in the homeless population are both likely because of the US social policy. Higher levels of inequality and lower levels of social benefits are associated with higher rates of homelessness. The Stewart McKinney Homeless Assistance Act of 1987 describes a homeless person as any place not meant for regular sleeping accommodation by humans. In 2005, an estimated 744,313 men, women, and children were homeless in the United States (National Alliance to End Homelessness, 2007). Adults that are homeless are poor and have high rates and they don’t qualify for health care. There are also a large number of former veterans who become homeless. It is estimated that...
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