Post 3

Our readings this week on affordable housing, community development, and social service tied together nicely and got me excited for what we might be learning about and discussing in class this week. I have had some great experiences in my time here at UO volunteering for issues related to homelessness and it is an issue I feel very strongly about. Through the Service Learning Program on campus I have participated in multiple Alternative Break trips to different cities in California and Oregon, and I am always consistently frustrated by the differences I find between the reality of the homeless communities I’ve worked with and the stigmatized views of them that can be found in the media and amongst our peers and politicians. I don’t contend that stereotypes of homeless individuals are entirely unfounded, and indeed recognize that, like any community, there is a full spectrum of behaviors and actions within the homeless population. I think what is frustrating for me is that I can’t seem to shake the idea that we have essentially created these stereotypes for transient individuals because it is simply easier and less costly to do so than to address the root causes of homelessness and accept some shared social responsibility for our situation. As the news article Understanding the tools in the affordable housing toolkit put it, “An often-overlooked remedy to the underlying problem is to increase the minimum wage across the board so that working people can live off of their income without needing other assistance. But this has not been the chosen approach, for the most part, in the United States.” Instead it seems, we have opted to fix the most basic element of the equation – the lack of housing part – via free and reduced-price housing options, leaving the disadvantaged communities utilizing them to fend for themselves beyond that. A couple of previous PPPM classes I’ve taken dealt with the history of the federal government’s Housing and Urban Development department, and I think it’s a really interesting example of looking at the evolution of social programs and policies in America; I’d recommend looking more into the subject to anyone who enjoyed the Understanding the tools article like I did.

While I also enjoyed reading that Louisiana was receiving federal funds for families struggling to keep their utilities paid, the other reading I liked a great deal was the chapter in our textbook on social service, particularly the latter half and the discussion of trends in nonprofit and governmental relations. It was almost ironic to me that this reading came now since I felt like it addressed a number of points of interest we had all brought up in weeks previous about how our current system of government and welfare came to be in America. The “public-private partnership” between all levels of government and the nonprofits they work with was cited in the book on page 85 as being “more pragmatic than philosophical” for a number of reasons. I think this was my favorite part of the reading because it summed up much more eloquently than I had ever done regarding why nonprofits are such an important part of our society. Without being tied down to governmental bureaucracy nonprofits are much more fluid and adaptive, and provide a great deal more jobs and better service to their constituents. Plus, it de-politicizes subjects that might otherwise have been too controversial to take action on. For many of these reasons and more I am thankful for nonprofits in our society. 


The Alternative Break trips I mentioned earlier have been some of the most challenging and most fulfilling experiences I've had here at UO, and I would definitely encourage anyone interested in them to read more about the program online at the Service Learning Program's website - serve.uoregon.edu. Or, feel free to ask me about them! I've had the experience of being a participant and co-facilitator and know the program pretty well and would be glad to testify - in fact, I already did: http://serve.uoregon.edu/programs/alternative_breaks/testimonials