HEADLINES:
 In 2020, University students will be working with unhoused folk on an asset-mapping project, for which the vision will be established later in January. Stay tuned!
Among other contributions of the faith community, two local churches have recently drawn attention for their good works. First Congregational Church has provided the space and infrastructure for two modular homes owned by St. Vincent de Paul, which will provide the case management for families transitioning into permanent housing. Northwood Christian Church has donated $10,000 to Community Supported Shelters.
Eugene's Housing Tools & Strategies workgroup has finished its 6-month process and has chosen the top recommendations for City of Eugene housing policy. Revising land use codes to allow more tiny homes and tiny communities is one of the top choices, out of more than 80 choices discussed at the meetings. Other key proposals are to add pre-approved Accessory Dwelling Units (ADU) plans, complete the audit of regulatory barriers to housing, and to revise the code to allow ADU's, duplexes, triplexes, cottage clusters, and smaller homes on smaller lot sizes in all single-family zones. Neighborhood Associations are expected to oppose these changes.
On the other hand, the Orange County Apartment Association is collaborating with United Way to convince local landlords and property managers that they should rent units to homeless people who are using government vouchers.
Community Supported Shelters plans to open a fourth conestoga hut community in Eugene on the northwest corner of the Lane County Fairgrounds. The trio of huts with associated portable restrooms and a common building will go in with the support of the Jefferson Westside Neighbors.
The U.S. Supreme Court will not take up Boise’s appeal in the case of Martin v. Boise, which addresses whether the city can ticket homeless people for “camping” in public. The court affirmed that the state many not "criminalize conduct that is an unavoidable consequence of being homeless" when there are more homeless persons than available shelter beds or adequate alternatives.
There are 24 million children under the age of six in America today. You know how many of them have to be taken care of all day, every day by an adult? All of them. Who provides that care -- and how they do it -- is the most overlooked, underestimated, and potentially game-changing issue in America today. The No Small Matter feature-length documentary on the importance of the first five years, will be shown Friday, January 10, 2020 at 6:30 PM – 8:30 PM at South Eugene High School, a free event.
OPINION & ANALYSIS:
 Omitting refugees (displaced persons) from stakeholder status represents a paternalistic posture and the seed of continual failure to address the fundamental problems of broken relationships, classism and self-serving privilege. This Eugene Weekly article touts the strength of a Portland "coalition called HereTogether that’s business leaders, faith leaders, nonprofits, government, coming together," which sounds great, and it fails to point out the glaring omission of those being served.
When we begin to address the hostility toward homeless people, we will actually make some progress.
"Homeless" = refugee, a person whose basic needs for existence have been damaged, violated, abused, denied.
When we deny our own empathy and compassion, when we refuse to take action to help, we have ourselves become homeless, we have violated our basic need for connection to our essential "home," our emotional/spiritual center that moves us through life, and our life becomes frozen in place, literally a dead end. This is the logic, the logos, the law, the karma if you will, of love. Use it or lose it.
I place my hope in the power of a few, determined people like Ai Wei Wei in China who use their love to connect with, support and heal the refugees, the homeless, the discounted and ostracized among us. Ai Wei Wei has become very much alive and shares his life freely with others. He is at home and no longer a refugee, himself. Each of us has the power to make this decision for ourselves, and the logos of love dictates that the more we share our love the more we will have to share, which is not a conclusion we can arrive at rationally. It has to be experiential, so just do it.
A total of 552,830 people were experiencing homelessness on a single night in 2018 in America, according to HUD’s Annual Point-in-Time Count. During the same period, there were 4,426,000 units of vacant housing (See table 11, counting only the year-round units for sale or rent), EIGHT TIMES the number of homeless people.
Re-framing the Way We Talk about Poverty: Three Insights from the FrameWorks Institute
1. Place 'Human Development' at the forefront of the work: explain why people matter, how they develop, and how environments influence their potential.
2. Consider using the simplest examples and metaphors to describe holistic/system-level approaches.
3. Anticipate and navigate misconceptions by looking at scientific evidence and root causes.
Primarily focused on preparation for sudden, natural disaster, why can't the Map your Neighborhood model be extended to building resilience in the slow-moving disaster of loss of housing due to economic or political causes? The “goal of Map your Neighborhood is people knowing their neighbors,” says Deb Jones, a Friendly Area neighbor. “Knowing who lives next door. Knowing if they have special needs but also knowing what skills or resources people have.”
Project applicants in land use controversies often instinctively view neighbors as NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) adherents. But that’s not a given, because neighbors sometimes become strong supporters of real estate projects.
Overcoming the Challenges of NIMBYism has useful info and a great bibliography of research on the effect of affordable housing on property values: virtually nil!
The Moment for Community Has Arrived "Dominant practices for engaging people, civically and organizationally, remain essentially ineffective....a weak substitute for learning and transformation."
|
