• Learn more about Cardi B’s family and home life in her full interviews with Vibe and Global Grind.
• To understand the demographics of who lives in which kind of community, read this article from the Pew Research Center: What Unites and Divides Urban, Suburban and Rural Communities.
• The state of Oregon hosts a web page dedicated to Permanent Supportive/Supported Housing Resources, which contains some of the federal government’s resources about Housing First.
• If you’d like to know more about Creating Moves to Opportunity, which helps families improve their housing options, there is both a webpage and a video you can watch.
• For more on how to assess your environment and its importance to health, watch this TEDMED TALK with Bill Davenhall.
• The Oregon Encyclopedia contains a summary of Black exclusion laws in Oregon.
• To hear the full story about Utah’s successful Housing First efforts, listen (or read) here.
• Theaster Gates founded the Rebuild Foundation in 2010, which is a nonprofit organization that encompasses multiple neighborhood improvement projects. To read more about his community work, visit the “Projects” section of his website.
• To learn more about how the work of Artists Jeroen Koolhaas and Dre Urhahn (aka Haas and Hahn) is funded and organized, watch their TED Talk here.

1. Reflect on houselessness and housing insecurity. What do you observe in your own community?
2. What is changing about where families live and the sizes of family households? How does your own experience relate to these changes?
3. What are some institutional barriers to home ownership, and who are those barriers most likely to affect?
4. How are redlining and bluelining related to housing access?
5. How does where you live relate to other aspects of family life, such as health and education?
6. “Housing First” has been successful when implemented. What are the barriers to seeing this practice used more universally?
7. Reflect on the role of stigma in housing access.
8. What are some solutions to the housing challenges that families in the United States face?

• Affordable housing: housing that can be accessed and maintained while paying for and meeting other basic needs such as food, transportation, access to work and school, clothing, and health care.
• Bluelining: real estate that is considered high risk due to low elevation and flooding due to climate change may not qualify for loans.
• Bracero program: a series of laws and diplomatic agreements initiated in 1942, when the United States signed an agreement with Mexico.
• Cost-burdened households: households that pay 30% or more of monthly income toward housing.
• Discrimination: the unequal treatment of an individual or group on the basis of their statuses (e.g., age, beliefs, ethnicity, sex).
• Environmental justice: focuses on equal protection against hazards and meaningful action to correct past discrimination.
• Fair Housing Act: an act that protects people from discrimination when they are renting or buying a home, getting a mortgage, seeking housing assistance, or engaging in other housing-related activities.
• Household size: all the people occupying a housing unit.
• Houseless/houselessness: lacking a permanent place to live.
• Housing First: an approach with the belief that people need basic necessities like food and shelter before focusing on other needs such as substance use, employment, or budget.
• Housing insecurity: having a place to live but having uncertainty about meeting basic needs or needing to move frequently.
• Redlining: the discriminatory practice of refusing loans to creditworthy applicants in neighborhoods that banks deem undesirable or racially occupied.
• Residential segregation: the physical separation of two or more groups into different neighborhoods.
• Renters: a person who does not own their place of living but pays another party to live in their place of living.
• Section 8 housing: a program that authorizes the payment of rental housing assistance to private landlords on behalf of low-income households.
• Shelters: places and organizations that provide temporary living space for houseless families and individuals.

The video in figure 8.20, made by an Oregon community college student, describes some of the aftereffects of a sudden, unexpected fire near Otis, Oregon, in September 2020. The Echo Mountain fire burned 2,500 acres and destroyed 25% of the 1,241 structures in the area (Yachats News, 2020).

https://youtu.be/ArwQ4YhkZUw

Discussion Questions

1. How did the COVID-19 pandemic affect the families who were impacted by the fire?
2. What kind of help can families expect when they live through a fire that destroys their home? What kinds of impacts do their social identities have on the help they receive?
3. How did the services of Echo Mountain Fire Relief, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), private insurance, and the Cascade Relief Team complement each other to help families? What did families need to do for themselves?