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Empower the Marginalized

How do we ensure that more people have the power to support themselves through meaningful work that is valuable to others?

Links

1. One of our primary focuses is on housing because housing costs make up 30-60% of the household budgets of the poor in the developed world (and typically a higher percentage the poorer one is). Moreover, the overall “affordability” strategies used in making affordable housing more widely available will also be used to bring better health care and education to the marginalized. The downloadable article “The Creation of Conscious Culture Through Educational Innovation,” available at the “Experience Flow” links page is also relevant.
2. Lynn Becker, “.” “Looking at all these high-tech bells and whistles, the question arises as to whether these designs can really be built at an affordable prize . . . “It would be very expensive to produce a prototype of many of them. At this point they read like boutique housing, but it doesn't have to be boutique if it were produced in large numbers. The Model T Ford, if they only produced one or a hundred, would have cost a fortune. . . . Maybe we should be questioning why we're not building houses the way we build cars . . . We're very willing to accept cars off an assembly line. We've come to recognize our manufacturing plants that create a great diversity of consumer products and meet consumer demand, yet in our housing somehow we insist that it has to be site-build to be a good home."
3. Karen Jensen, “Manufacturing a New Kind of Affordable Housing: Seattle's Noji Gardens. A practical real world example of using manufactured housing to provide more affordable housing.
4. Glaeser, Gyourko, and Saks, “Why is Manhattan So Expensive? Regulation and the Rise in House Prices.” Although Manhattan is obviously just one area, this study does a good job of showing exactly how regulation results in higher housing prices.
5. Glaeser, Gyourko, and Saks, “Why Have Housing Prices Gone Up?” This paper extends their analysis to the U.S. as a whole and show that, while construction costs are decreasing, housing costs have increased 72% since 1970, largely as a result of regulation and “increased quality,” some of which may be regulation-driven.
6. William Tucker, “How Rent Control Drives Out Affordable Housing.” Includes a great graph showing the distribution of rental units in free market Philadelphia (numerous low-rent units available) vs. the distributions of rental units in rent-controlled NYC (virtually only high-rent units available).
7. Wright and Rubin, “Is Homelessness a Housing Problem?” A helpful survey of the various causes contributing to homelessness. Although the article recognizes the dramatic elimination of Single Room Occupancy (SRO) hotels in the 1970s contributed greatly to the explosion of homelessness in the 1980s, the authors prefer subsidized housing to our goal of making privately-supplied housing more affordable again.
8. Jason Furman, “WalMart, A Progressive Success Story.” Among other things, Furman’s article reminds us of the extraordinary benefits to poor people Walmart brings; he cites an estimate of $265 billion per year in savings which mostly go to lower income people. If manufactured housing was a legal option in more areas, a “Walmart of housing” could bring similar savings to low-income housing.
9. Vipassana Meditation. An extraordinary, rigorous, ten-day course in self-discipline, focus, and well-being, AT NO COST. “There are no charges for the courses - not even to cover the cost of food and accommodation. All expenses are met by donations from people who, having completed a course and experienced the benefits of Vipassana, wish to give others the opportunity to also benefit.” The marginalized in our society often suffer most deeply from an absence of self-discipline, focus, and well-being; a free course that may put them on a path to strength and recovery ought to be encouraged. It has been used in prisons in India with remarkable results. This type of free training, from a variety of paths, is apt to be far more effective than are various “job training” programs that don't address underlying issues.

Downloads

• Michael Strong, “Empowering the Marginalized,” an excerpt from The FLOW Manifesto (to be published later in 2006).

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