Class Report #1 - 1/25/18

Eviction Day

1.0   The Inside of the Edward W. Brooke Courthouse

First Take

First walking into the courthouse is a overwhelming experience in and of itself never mind the 
fact that peoples’ lives are being changed within its core. 

You are first met by a wall of security and metal detectors forcing you to practically undress if you 
don’t have the privilege of a Lawyer’s license allowing you to pass no questions asked. 

Walking further into the building, we were met with a grand atrium space that reminds you how 
small you are within the confines of such a monumental establishment. The building itself gives off 
an air of monumentality with large columns covered in white granite and granite staircases.

Class Report 1.25.18

Class Report #1

The class was asked to meet at the Edward Brooks Courthouse for a tour of the courthouse and an opportunity to sit in on housing court hearings and trials.

1)    Tour of the Courthouse

a)     In order to enter the courthouse civilians are required to go through metal detectors and hand over their belongings to go through a screening. Layers are allowed to show their BAR license card/ credentials and walk into the courthouse without screening.

b)    The class met in the large atrium space of the courthouse, in front of the roll call screens that list the cases being heard for the day. The class met with Paul Burke who is the administrator of the Massachusetts Housing Court, who provided the tour of the courthouse.

Blog Post #1 - Responding to Evicted

I really enjoyed reading through Evicted as a way to frame our understanding of the subject for the rest of the semester and jumpstart some thoughts on future design problems. As we discussed in class, the combination of intensely personal narrative and more macro statistical information was very strong. It painted a seemingly complete picture of the housing problems in Milwaukee and, I am convinced, the country at large.

Class Report: 1-24-2018

 Short class today in preparation of eviction court field trip.

1.0 Finishing Evicted

                       a.Things we did not expect in the book:

o   Sachia Chin Loy - “I was surprised to find out 

      that the author’s landlord for the duration of 

      his time in Milwaukee, was Sherrena and Quentin Tarver.”

(Sherrena Tarver - landlord with rental properties on Milwaukee’s poor black South Side)

(Quentin Tarver - Sherrena’s husband; managed maintenance of rental properties)

Class Report: 1-25-2018

1.0  Edward W. Brooke Courthouse

Locked Up, Locked Out

Reading Matthew Desmond’s “Evicted” has brought me more understanding of the housing climate that we currently deal with in our society. Desmond discusses many issues and strong points, which have resonated with me. After reading the book, I came to the conclusion that this system was not built for people of color, specifically black people. My connection comes from Desmond going back in history and explaining that “racial oppression enabled land exploitation on a massive scale.” He brought up history that we have all learned before in a social studies course but connected it in ways I didn’t think of.

The Issue of Ethics

Blog Post #1

           

            Ethics- “moral principles that govern a person's behavior or the conducting of an activity”

            At what point do we question ethics, in class we have sparked a conversation about housing and evictions. The world to me is a never-ending circle, us as people are always trying to prosper, we make money and lose money. There are ups and downs. In the book Evicted by Matthew Desmond there are a lot of ethical questions that elude to the crippling economy in Milwaukee.  

Tyler Winslow - Blog Post #1

Issue of Morality and Landlords

Throughout the stories of each of the peoples' lives in the book "Evicted", the issue of providing housing to families with children is completely baffling to me. As a single Dad myself, I can't wrap my head around not being able to provide a home for my daughter. Arleen and Pam are two of the main people who are followed throughout the book, who both have multiple children and are unable to provide for them a decent place to sleep, a regular diet or a stable life.

Omar Malkawi - Blog Post #1

Evicted, by Mathew Desmond, has been an eye-opening introduction to complex world of housing and evictions that has helped me better humanize people’s personal stories and struggles. With housing, many parties are involved each with their own goals and challenges. Housing is more than a roof and utilities, it shapes the lives of people and can greatly affect their quality of life.

Massachusetts Courthouses_Blog Post #1_Ben Gilbert

Paul Burke’s presentation was intriguing because the light it shed on the complications the Massachusetts’ judicial system handles on the daily. The Massachusetts court system spans over the entire state, while each courthouse varies between the organization of the courts, how they are approached, and how they handle the procedures that the judicial system handles every day. Paul is a part of the Housing Court, which is one of the seven trial courts, it is one that has been relocated within the same building due to changes of where courthouses are to be housed.

Originally in the Edward Burke Courthouse, the Housing Court had their own floor, through many different changes throughout the state’s funding and planning Boston Municipal Court had to be moved into a facility that could house the many courtrooms needed to fulfill their needs. This move resulted in many different spaces that were used differently from the intended use in order to fit all the employees, detainees, and the public who are to use the courts.

Throughout Paul’s presentation, flashbacks of serving on a jury helped illustrate the processes that Paul had been mentioning during his presentation. Having served on a jury case, the orchestrated processes that were discussed on the courts procedures became very coherent. Through an understanding of how and where the public and staff are supposed to be can help determine the decisions that could be made, this in turn could help flush out complications that follow from visitors entering the court not knowing what to expect.

The design for the new courthouse in Lowell, is a good example of things the employees of the court would like to have within a courthouse, although, that situation is comes from many years of planning and voting to obtain needed funds. This example shows throughout the presentation that the design decisions were made clearly throughout the project. They were made with intent to make the court process easier for not just the public that need coming into court, but for the employees of the courthouse from the judges, clerks, security, and all the way to the detainees that are transported into the facility. Having precedents such as these in mind can make understanding the courts and what they need easier for someone who does not always handle court procedures.

Survival bp|1

I have never been a very good reader. I often cannot concentrate, or I simply just don’t retain the information read. To my surprise, however, Evicted by Matthew Desmond did not pose a struggle for me. I could not read this book fast enough. The events, the stories, the system, the everything is so utterly shocking to me. The social divide acts as the surface to the shock factor, but the most intriguing part to me was the behaviors of each person. Evicted begins to understand how these people act in certain situations: when times are hard, when times are good, or even when times are just “okay”. I want to sort out my thoughts on this post about the fire incident that is explained at the end of Part Two, pages 197-203.

From this incident, it is clear to see just how desensitizing the world is. Everyone is just trying to survive. To what degree that survival may be, varies and the divide certainly is vast. Some are trying to survive like Tobin, who takes home $447,000 a year, while others are trying to survive like Arleen, who is not really sure where her next meal for her kids is coming from. These circumstances and situations shape us as humans and it affects not only the decisions we make, but also how we feel and, in relation to the fire incident, it may affect our ability to sympathize. “They are not getting any money back from me” (pg 202), the positive thing “is that I may get a huge chunk of money” (pg 203), or “one less eviction to worry about” (pg 203) are just a couple of the shocking comments Sherrena made shortly after discovering that Kamala’s 8-month old daughter just died in a fire. Sherrena seems desensitized to the situations that occur regarding any tenant, regardless how big or small. She has been dealing with conflict after conflict for so long that she seems to have hardly any compassion. Similar situations can be compared to firefighters, police officers, doctors, etc. When you are involved in similar conditions day in and day out, they may become second nature and you may lose the ability to have a reaction anymore; the mind is set on survival mode.

Another point  from Evicted I would like to discuss is that everyone in this life has choices. The families discussed  in this book receive assistance from the government, one way or another, and the majority, if not all, spend this money on drugs, or useless objects they don’t need, like Lorraine who had “blown a few hundred dollars on a Luminess Air makeup application kit advertised on television” (pg 121). If even just half of these people were responsible with their money, they most likely would not face eviction. In some sense, I do feel sorry for them, but in another, I don’t. Granted, there are underlying issues and circumstances, however, I am speaking in relation to the people who fit the description above. It is hard for me to feel sorry for someone who takes more pleasure in getting high than putting food on the table for their children.

The mix of emotions I had while reading this book will make my head spin for quite awhile. Eviction is a remarkably staggering book.

Problem Properties?

Reading Matthew Desmond’s “Evicted” has exposed me to realities I previously thought inconceivable. The statistics he provides are staggering: New York served 80 nonpayment evictions a day in 2012, 1 in 2 recently evicted mothers suffers from symptoms of clinical depression, 1 in 5 black women reports being evicted in their adult life as compared to 1 in 15 white women (Desmond 299). The list goes on.

Where are the leases?

Old, broken appliances, non-working sinks and toilets, noisy neighbors – these are all reoccurring issues that we witness as we read Evicted.

Most, if not all, of the characters in Evicted are living in poverty. They are surviving pay check to pay check and the apartments that they can afford are certainly not ideal. The characters in the book experience apartments with broken appliances and sometimes apartments without any appliances at all – because the law does not require a landlord to supply anything but the basics. I am curious if the renters are aware of this law. Do the landlords let the tenants know this? Or do people move in only to find out that they are not supplied with a fridge, stove and oven?

Fair and Just | Blog Post 1

“I’m not a bad person,” says Mary, “I just fell on some hard times.”

“I’m not a bad person,” says Jane, “I just need to protect my investment.”

Through the case study of Mary and Jane, I was exposed to the realities of eviction court for the first time. Facing the harsh realities of both the tenant and the landlord, deciding what is fair and what is just leads to different outcomes of the situation. The conversation around this particular study ended up with two separate outcomes: one that sympathizes Mary’s situation and one where Jane’s, and the court’s, actions are right.

Class Report: 1-22-18

01. Evicted Discussion

• By today the class was required to have read through Part Two of Matthew Desmond's Evicted.
• Gizelle and Tory initiated a conversation about how and why Sherrena is getting harder to defend after viewing the burning down of one of her houses, which led to the death of a child, as a financial silver-lining. 

Brody Walsh: Blog Post #1

In the last few lines of part one of Evicted, we read a conversation between Sherrena and Arleen taking place at the end of a car ride home from housing court. Earlier, in court, the commissioner ruled that Arleen would still have to leave her home, but if she would do so before the new year, Sherrena would receive much less money as a result of a reduced money judgement. The conversation in the car begins with both people having splitting post-court-headaches; Sherrena’s because of her disappointment regarding how court had gone and Arleen’s because of how little she had eaten all day. The conversation ends with Sherrena dropping off Arleen at her soon-to-be-emptied home and saying, “...if you ever thinking about becoming a landlord, don’t. It’s a bad deal. Get the short end of the stick every time.” Arleen replies, “Merry Christmas.”

Class Report: 1-17-18

01. Evicted Discussion

• Part One of Matthew Desmond's Evicted was due today, and we spent the first 20 minutes of class discussing our initial reactions
• General consensus was that the situations presented were complex for everyone involved, with no clear winner
• Everyone appreciated the balance in the book between subjective narrative and more objective statistics and facts, especially in the footnotes

Big Take-Away: Evicted is presenting a good introduction to this complicated topic, focusing mainly on the social and human aspects of housing problems with an addition of legal and institutional detail.

Class Report: 1-10-2018

1.0 Course Syllabus

The course syllabus was discussed in depth, explaining the various topics that the class will be discussing, graded upon, and rules that will be adhered to throughout the course.

The differences between the class reports and blog posts were explained while describing how they are to be split up between the students.

2.0 Big Problems

How can we, students with and architectural education, help solve bigger problems that are not in our immediate field of study?

• The scientific method was a topic to be reviewed having input from the whole class.

    With these words, the groups were to put them into an order that they deemed correct.

• After each group decided on their interpretation of the solution, the class would reconvene to discuss their reasoning why they choose the order that they did. 

• Each group determined their order and each group each had differences. However, all of the groups placed their sequence in a straight line. This straight line was a solution that did not place any hierarchy on any one part of the problem-solving process. 

The biggest discussion in this point of the exercise was where in the problem-solving sequence, “assemble a team” would appear. 

• How do we determine what is good or bad? How can we say no to something before it’s been tested? These questions were asked about the “test ideas/ prototype” and “assess success and failure” in the order decided by each group.

Each group broke up again, from the full class, with a new angle on this process exercise. We were then asked to place these same words in the order needed to solve the issue Marilyn had given us, “American politics is divisive.”

• The outcomes for this iteration were completely different throughout each group. They had begun to think outside the box as to how they could show hierarchy and the decision on where to place words changed drastically too.

After the initial group meeting for this exercise, something that changed my perspective on the way in which we looked at it was bringing the idea of hierarchy and out of the box thinking that we have been taught to this seemingly simple task of putting words in an order. By doing so the order of words went from a straight line into a cycle that would inevitably be a repeating loop until the problem at hand was solved in some way or another.
3.0 May & Jane Situation

The class progressed and the discussion changed as the class was given a handout with a situation between a tenant, Mary, and her landlord, Jane. This paper gave background information that led up to Jane evicting Mary from her apartment.

• The discussion of money following risk within the business world surfaced as the business of the landlord became more relevant.

• Red-Herring – Something that is thrown into a situation/story to distract the reader to lose focus on the facts that are being presented.

• In the end of the discussion the class had come to the conclusion that we do not know the for sure what is the correct decision unless we have the lease.

The big take-away from this discussion would be there are many different variables throughout an eviction process and whether or not things were done in the correct order, it still falls on the agreement that was signed on for the lease.The class was split up into three smaller groups and given a list of unorganized words explaining different parts of a problem-solving sequence.

The big take-away from this exercise would be that each problem, if one is at hand, can have a different order of operations involving parts may be more important than others. The iteration process is something we learn through design school that can be implemented in situations and problems that may not directly connect with design issues, but can be solved and reflected upon using this technique.