PQC/HH Community Business Analysis

In addition to social networks, it is becoming increasingly difficult for Detroit residents to find basic networks for goods and services. As previously mentioned, Detroit is a geographically large city. Developments and introduction of business in one neighborhood, does not directly benefit all residents. Sheila Cockrel has noticed that more and more businesses such as convenience stores, cleaners, and pharmacies are being built in attempts to make neighborhoods more walkable. This helps residents who otherwise would have to go to the suburbs for such basic needs as food and water; a difficult task seeing as many neighborhoods lack a reliable transportation system. Many of the organizations we talked with share a common goal of trying to

The housing crisis in New York City disguises itself well, hiding in the back of commercial zones or illegal tenements. Jacob Riis, a reformer at the end of the last century, spoke through photographs of the City’s poorest neighborhoods to impress the issue upon the world. His book, How the Other Half Lives, was a cry to the public for affordable housing and livable conditions for the city’s poor. Ironically, as an October 1996 New York Times article points out, 100 years under the bridge has not created even a marginal move of progress. Contrary to the popular belief that hard work and fair play yield access to the “American Dream,?the Times article depicts the conditions of the working poor, the “all but homeless?class that exists day by day.

In 2013, I had the opportunity to assist local public school administrators on the issue of illiteracy and the allocation of resources in inner-city schools. Additionally, I collaborated on a small team to implement plans to provide public housing for the homeless in Orange County, CA. During this time, I also had the opportunity to be a nanny for five kids who were formerly homeless. I was able to be a part of their transition from street life to home life and witness the effects of poverty

America’s lower class is omnipresent. Waiters, taxi drivers, maids, and cooks are all examples of people who likely make minimum wage or close to it. Much like with the untouchables of Hinduism, people deal with these workers daily and often do not give a second thought at how their lifestyles are. This pervasive disregard for the lower class has led to many people not knowing the seemingly insurmountable difficulties many members of the lower class face daily. Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America seeks to expose the harsh realities of life for these people. She notes that some of coworkers are homeless and that others must support multiple people with an income of less than ten dollars an hour. Repeatedly, she includes details that highlight the desperately destitute conditions of her coworkers. At its core, Nickel and Dimed is a book whose author wrote to edify people of the reprehensible conditions of the lower class in the United States and the injustices of the American system.

Recently Detroit has been publicly experiencing a lot of issues within the city, which has cause many people to speak out on the matter. Alex Johnson was no different, He wrote in article called “No Water, No Teachers: Behind Detroit's Surge, Old Problems Stubbornly Persist”. Throughout the article Johnson discuss the harsh reality of living in Detroit and the affect it has on the community. As I read this article I felt empathic for the people of Detroit because no person deserve to be without water or a stable education. Overall I felt that the article was a cry for help and that the government really needs to step up and help.

With Youngstown leading the nation with a poverty rate of 49.7%, it is clear that this isn’t a good place to live. It is one of six cities with greater than 40% poverty in the U.S, and has over 63.3% of children living below the poverty line. The metropolitan statistical area of which Youngstown is a part of is ranked just 16 from the bottom of the poverty barrel. While it’s apparent Youngstown is struggling, there is one

It is no mystery that that America has inherent issues with taking care of its lower class in comparison to many other developed countries. What is concerning is that people can work a fulltime job or may be even two jobs and still not have the resources needed to make ends meet in this society of consumption. The poor of America do not even receive even the slightest bit of sympathy and are coldly told that they should work harder as if they were not already doing that previously. Barbara Ehrenreich, the author of Nickel and Dimed, gives up her role as a member of the upper-middle class and speculates on the viability of living impoverished, detailing awful and harmful that life is, and implies much needed changes, revealing harsh injustices

Does the United States really support its citizens and allow them to prosper? In Barbara Ehrenreich’s book Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America, Ehrenreich investigates this question by living as a low-wage worker for three months in cities around the United States. Her experiences teach her that as her jobs change, so does her place in society. Nickel and Dimed effectively proves American society does not support the poor; instead, it decreases low-wage workers’ mobilities and forces them to live lives that are focused only on their jobs. Through her journey, Ehrenreich learns that because she works “unskilled” labor, her place in society changes.

“Gentrification” captures class disparities and injustices created by capitalist urban land markets and policies. This in turn can cause an increasing house expense encumbrance for low-income and working-class households, and the associated personal catastrophes of displacement, removal, and homelessness, are symptoms of a set of institutional arrangements (private property rights and a free market) that support the creation of urban environments to serve the needs of capital accumulation at the expense of the social needs of home, community, family. Displacement from home and neighbourhood can be a shattering experience. At worst it leads to homelessness, at best it impairs a sense of community. Public policy should, by general agreement,

The city of Merced has several issues such as having a high unemployment rate of 12.6%, compared to California’s unemployment rate of 5.7%. Merced’s children living in food insecure households is 33.3% while California has a 26.3% and Merced’s child poverty rate is 38.1% while California’s rate is 22.7%. Clearly, Merced has issues but there are more. Furthermore, these issues could lead to one another. For instance, if a student goes to school hungry because they don’t have enough food to eat, the student’s main focus will be food and when will they have the opportunity to eat again, if they will. The

In light of the most recent election results I find myself worrying about the countless social and economic injustices that will perpetuate to occur in our country. I dwell on our history, of how our social welfare system created and continues to reinforce discrimination, privilege and oppression. How did we end up like this and where is that “American dream” promised to those within our boarders? In our country, “an obsession with free-market logic and culture has led to the political class to craft policies that promote private interests over the public good” explains Marc Lamont Hill, a political contributor for CNN and author to the thought provoking book, Nobody: Casualties of America’s War on the Vulnerable, from Ferguson to Flint and Beyond. In ‘Nobody,’ published earlier this year, Hill sets the scene of social injustice through his analysis of the vulnerable, providing a snapshot of social upheaval. Two other literary works, $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America by Kathryn Edin and Luke Shaefer, and Bryan Stevenson’s book, Just Mercy: A story of justice and redemption, additionally seek to describe how social injustices and economic issues manifest in America. Together, all three texts use shocking personal accounts from people, community members and onlookers to craft together the narrative of America’s devastating reality. ‘Nobody’, ‘Just Mercy’, and ‘$2.00 a Day’ exposes our society’s shortcomings through their themes of poverty,

Due to the continuous rise in unemployment throughout Midwest, communities are feeling the grunt of the storm. According to Pete Buttigieg, the current mayor of South Bend, Indiana, keeping the community together and making sure it remains one is an extremely difficult challenge (“Reinvention in the rust belt”). If members in communities throughout the Midwest or “Rust Belt” such as South Bend continue to lose jobs, therefore, there will be fewer wages and less money circulating, poverty and crime rates will continue to spike and there will eventually be no “community” left at all. Currently in South Bend, “…Violent crime remains nearly twice the Indiana average; 28% of its inhabitants live below the poverty line and 75% of children in public

In recent months, New York City has planned to steadily open homeless shelters to combat the growing population of people living on the streets. In spite of these plans, numerous shelters have failed to open, citing causes such as lack of available space, failure of safety inspections, and most notably, a lack of funding. This dysfunctional system demonstrates the true passivity and lack of concern contributing to the oppression of the poor. Injustices towards those in poverty aren't just recent happenings. Throughout the Great Depression during the 1930's, the gap between socioeconomic classes widened greatly. The affluent gained more riches and the impoverished lost what little wealth they had. Physical separations were created as well, as classes could be differentiated mainly by the areas of their city in which they lived. This rift in society, both economically and physically, provided a platform for discrimination and prejudice towards the

While it has proven to be difficult to end poverty in America, Peter Edelman is optimistic. In his book So Rich, So Poor Edelman makes a call to action. There are four prominent ideas that underpin Edelman’s reasoning throughout the book: (1) More people must understand why poverty is still so prevalent in America; (2) extreme poverty must be taken into consideration as a shocking 6 million Americans’ sole income was food stamps in 2011. This fact alone creates a sense of urgency that drives Edelman; (3) increasing income inequality should be treated as a moral issue; and (4) bold political action will be required if substantive progress will be made in alleviating poverty.

In addition to Hazel story, news of the poorest city in America, Camden, New Jersey, has also risen. The federal government requires all states to have a homeless count every other year in order to fund homeless services, and this year in Camden, CNN brought homelessness into the spotlight. CNN interviewed with Michael Powell, a homeless man who lives on the outskirts of one of the “tent cities” that surveyors often find, and discovered that Michael Powell, and some others, had never been accounted for in the homeless count. In fact, Michael Powell did not know that a count even existed. “’It's set up to be kind of an impossible task,’ said Maria Foscarinis, founder of the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty. She said one way to get more accurate findings would be to extend the count over a longer period of time or to do multiple counts per year.” (Ellis 1) However, this may never happen because federal assistance and programs that provide assistance to the needy are experiencing cuts in their fund.