Where is the next home? Drive away and report on the residence of undercover sociologists

A home, a home of hope, is the center of people's life. Home is a safe haven, a place where we can work hard at school, concentrate nervously and return after all kinds of robberies in the street. Some people say that at home, we can be ourselves. As long as we leave home, we will become another person. Only when we get home can we take off our underwear.

Home is the source of personality and the place where our identity can take root, sprout, blossom and bear fruit. When we were young, we would dream, play and get to the bottom of it at home. Teenagers will retire and get ready at home, and then leave home to take risks. When we grow up, we will want to build our own family, have children and work hard. Home is such a base. When it comes to knowing ourselves, we often start with what kind of family we come from.

In many languages in the world, the meaning of "home" is not only to shelter from the wind and rain, but also to remind people of warmth, safety and affection-just like a mother's womb. In ancient Greek, the hieroglyphics of "home" were often used instead of "mother". The Chinese word "home" has two meanings, family and house. The word "Shelter" in English is spelled by two Latin words: scield (barrier) and Matu (team). Together, it is the appearance of a family gathered under an umbrella. Since ancient times, home is the foundation of life. Home is a temple to share delicious food and a place to cultivate static interests, where families will pour out their dreams and establish traditions.

Life in a metropolis also begins with lights. Home allows us to take root and sprout, and let us gather every household into a community that belongs to everyone. As a family, we will participate in local politics, and we will unite our neighbors with the feeling that "distant relatives are not as good as close neighbors". "It is not easy to force a person to stand up and care about the affairs of the whole country," said alexis de tocqueville, a French political scholar. "But when it comes to clearing the way in front of his house, he will immediately feel that this small public affair will have a great impact on his vital interests. We must wait until the street becomes our street, the park becomes our park and the school becomes our school. Only in this way will we truly evolve into citizens who take public affairs as their responsibility, and will we be willing to invest time and resources in our positive values: whether it is patrolling the community, volunteering to beautify the children's playground, or running for the local education Committee, recognition from home is the most important opportunity.

Efforts to contribute to public welfare are the engine of democracy, the life of communities, cities and countries, and ultimately the foundation of our country. Gunnar Myrdal, a Swedish economist, once wrote that paying for public welfare represents "idealism and moral feelings that gush from the hearts of Americans". This impulse has many names. Some people say it is "national love", "patriotism" and "American spirit". No matter what name you wear or what face you wear, its connotation is also "home". What is a country? Isn't it the combination of city and town? What are cities and towns? Is it not a collection of neighbors? What is a neighborhood? It's just a family bond.

America should be a place to make ourselves better, our family better and our community better. But to have such an America, we must first have a stable home. If Scott didn't get an apartment at a reasonable price through the hotel's permanent housing placement plan first, how could he draw a line with heroin? How can I find a meaningful job as a house manager in a homeless shelter? How can we start on the road of independent self-help? Since then, he has maintained the stability of his residence and a clear head. Then there is the Hinkston family. After little Malik was born, patrice and Doreen finally moved to Brownsville, Tennessee, a small town with a population of about 1 10,000. They found a comfortable three-bedroom apartment. Patrice passed the GED exam from the initial kennel and achieved the same academic ability in high school. The teacher admired her very much, and she became a model student among the adult students. Patrice persevered and continued to study online computer and criminal law courses at the local community college. In order to become a parole officer, she must pave the way. She often says half jokingly, "Many of my friends are prisoners and will be my guests in the future! 」

Poverty is deeply rooted and cruel in the United States. It is hard not to be disheartened and let us give up our long-cherished wish to make the world a better place. But Scott and patrice are the two best witnesses. They will tell you that home is the most solid pedal. Home, you can live in other people's homes, so that people can become more and more stable on the road of becoming good parents, good employees and good citizens.

If Arlene and Vanita didn't have to spend 70% to 80% of their income, they wouldn't have no money to support their children and no home. Without the pressure of rent, they can find a community to settle down. Instead of transferring children from school all day, children have the opportunity to make lifelong friends and slowly gather role models and mentors around them. They will have spare time to open an account in the bank, buy books or toys for their children, and even buy a computer to keep at home. In order to pay the rent on time, delay the fate of being deported to the last moment, and quickly find the next place to stay when wandering, they spent a lot of time and energy, which could have been used to enrich their lives: they could have gone to community colleges, exercised, worked and found a good partner.

However, our current situation "puts people born with more into poverty." In the past 100 years, there is a general understanding in the United States that it is appropriate for families to spend less than 30% on housing. Until recently, this is indeed the goal that most renters can achieve; But the situation has changed for a while-now in Milwaukee, and even the whole United States, the situation has deteriorated to an unmanageable level. The number of families who are driven out of their homes every year in the United States is no longer a problem of tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands. What we see is that millions of people sleep on the streets or are forced to live in shelters every year.

Not long ago, many people didn't know how exaggerated this problem was and what serious consequences the housing problem would cause. Only those who have experienced it personally know the seriousness and consequences of the problem. One thing that academics, media and politicians have in common for many years is to turn a blind eye to the issue of expulsion. As a result of the ignorance of these three parties, the expulsion obviously affected the lives of poor families, but little attention was paid to sociological research. Fortunately, with the emergence of data and new research methods, we have been able to assess the extent of the flooding of expulsion and record its impact. Including the inseparable relationship between demolition and poor communities, and even the painful price paid by demolition to families, communities and children, we are all obvious to all.

People must be able to live in peace in order to be psychologically stable. Only when you are calm can you spend your mind on family affairs and interpersonal relationships. Living in peace, children don't have to run around, and they have better opportunities to improve and accumulate in their studies. People can live in peace, the community will be stable, and neighbors can cultivate feelings and form the concept of mutual assistance. But for poor families, the so-called stability is simply out of reach, and they are often driven out of rented houses. Low-income families often move, which is social common sense; But why they often move, scholars and politicians are not clear, because they simply don't pay attention to the frequency of eviction from low-income communities. From 2009 to 20 1 1 year, about a quarter of the poorest tenants in Milwaukee were forced to move. If this involuntary situation (expelled by the landlord or sealed up by the court, etc.). ) Excluding it, the moving frequency of low-income families is actually the same as that of ordinary people. If you check the court records of expulsion cases in other cities, you will find that the truth is so outrageous. Take Missouri in 2009-20 13 as an example. Jackson County covers half of Kansas City, with an average of 19 tenants evicted every day. In 20 12, the courts in New York issued nearly 80 eviction orders every day for non-payment of rent. In the same year, one in nine renters in Cleveland and one in 14 renters in Chicago will receive eviction notices from the court. Being poor does not mean that you can't live a stable life; But the poor will move around, usually by force.

In addition to depriving people of the stability of life, expulsion will also lead to the loss of personal property. Residents will not only bid farewell to their comfortable homes, beloved alma mater and familiar neighborhoods, but also lose tangible property: furniture, clothes and books. It's not easy to build a home. Money and time must be considerable, but they can be erased by driving away. Arlene lost everything, and Larry and Scott were in the same boat. Expulsion will make people unemployed, and the probability of being fired after expulsion will increase 15%. If people can't live in the front and live happily in the back, the reason lies in the pressure and shadow brought by losing their home, which will seriously impact the performance of workers in the workplace. Households who rent houses are often disqualified from living in public houses because the Milwaukee Housing Authority will calculate the number of evictions and unpaid rent when examining the rental application, which is called the "three strikes clause". In other words, families who are overwhelmed by rent and cornered should be the ones who need * * * to lend a helping hand most, but the system keeps this group of people out.

Their property, jobs and families have been taken away, but there is no way to turn to the public sector for help. No wonder expulsion will make what sociologists call "material difficulties" worse. "Material hardship" outlines the essence of scarcity. To be precise, "material deprivation" evaluates whether families experience hunger or illness because they can't afford food or medical care, or whether they have no heating, electricity, lights or telephones because they have no money. According to statistics, in the second year of expulsion, such families will experience 20% higher "material difficulties" than those without similar conditions. They will be hungry, cold or sick. The expelled families will continue to be in above-average material difficulties, which may last for at least two years after expulsion.

These families will be forced to accept the harsh living environment. In Milwaukee, compared with families with the same conditions but less serious moving factors, families who have recently moved involuntarily are more likely to fall into long-term housing problems.

The family being driven out of the original rental house means that their foothold in the city will change from ordinary poverty to very poverty, and they will move from the dead corner of public security to the abyss of sin. This is a concept of "there is no worst, only worse". Arlene's favorite residence was hidden in the black community of grassroots workers. After the city government declared her unfit to live and forced her to move, Arlene moved into a new home, an apartment community full of drug dealers. Even excluding the influence of many important variables, we can see that forced relocation will be worse than voluntary relocation. Concentrated poverty and violence will create new problems and add salt to the wounds of vulnerable groups. After all, the neighborhood determines the big and small things in our lives, from what kind of job opportunities adults can get to what kind of schools children must go to, all of which are immediate things.

Then it is to drive away the mental harm to people. Forced relocation is a kind of violence, which will force people to embark on the road of depression, and even make people commit suicide in serious cases. For families that have just been evicted recently, one in every two mothers said that they have various symptoms of clinical depression, which is twice as high as that of families that have not been evicted but have similar other situations. Even after many years, compared with their peers, mothers with expulsion memories will still appear depressed, uninterested or not optimistic. A group of psychiatrists once said that several patients committed suicide on the eve of being deported. After the tragedy, this group of doctors published an open letter in Psychiatric Service, pointing out that expulsion is an "important precursor to suicide". The letter emphasizes that these patients will not be homeless because of being deported, so they have to reasonably blame their suicide on the deportation itself. "Expulsion must be regarded as a kind of rejection, which will leave people with trauma," the doctor wrote. "Being expelled is an experience that people's most basic needs are denied, and it is an extremely humiliating thing. From 2005 to 20 10, the number of suicides caused by eviction or confiscation of rented houses doubled, which happened to be a year when the cost of living soared.

Evictions can even affect communities where families are forced to say goodbye. Neighborhood can cooperate with each other and cultivate mutual trust. Cooperation and mutual trust will make the community more prosperous and secure, but it will take time. The establishment of community awareness and the investment of various resources will be hindered by the high turnover rate of residents. In other words, eviction will tear the sense of unity in the community. As long as they are driven away, their neighbors who know each other will become strangers, and their potential to cooperate in fighting crime and promoting citizen participation will be abandoned intact. In Milwaukee communities, every time the eviction rate increases in one year, the violent crime rate will soar in the next year. This point will not change even if the influence of previous crime rate or other related factors is excluded.

Losing one's residence and things outside, losing one's job is more frequent, being branded as being expelled, being deprived of assistance in life, being forced to move to a poorer and more dangerous place, having to endure deeper material suffering, having nowhere to move, being homeless, being depressed (sick), suffering physically and so on. -these are all "lazy bags" to get rid of sequelae. Driving away is not only a gloomy low tide for poor families, but also a hard but short-lived simple life that is off track. Driving away will fundamentally make the road of life never return, and those who are driven away will embark on a hard road of no return. Expulsion is not the result of poverty, but the cause of poverty. People are driven out not because they are poor, but because they are driven out.

The lethality of expulsion does not distinguish between young and old, nor between the sick and the weak. Only for poor women and children of color, expulsion has become a common thing. When you walk into the housing court of any metropolis in the United States, you can see mothers with their children lining up on cold benches, waiting to be summoned to appear in court. Among the tenants in Milwaukee, more than one-fifth of black women said that they had been evicted as adults, which was much higher than one-twelfth of Latino women and one-fifteenth of white women.

Many families in Milwaukee have children, and in all parts of the United States, many children who are expelled from their families will eventually become homeless. Out of desperation, many evicted families can only devote themselves to substandard housing conditions and unsafe environment, which will not only harm children's health, damage their learning ability, but even reduce their self-worth and self-esteem. Removal will aggravate the mother's depression. In the long run, the mother will not be excited and happy, and finally even the children can feel the chill. Arlene, Vanita and even many parents want to give their children a stable life, but expulsion is an insurmountable gap. Drive away to let the children go in and out from school and let the children wander in the community. Even if they finally find a place to live, these families will inevitably have to "pay tribute" to the landlord, and the money they can spend on their children is pitiful. The more money you spend on housing, the less money parents spend on their children. The poor have been living beyond their means. Although we can't afford to pay the rent, people always have a place to live. The problem is that we live in a junk house picked up by others. There is no place for the poor in our city, which has left a cruel and profound trace of pain in the hearts of the next generation.

Their suffering makes us feel guilty, mainly because these things can be avoided. However, there is still hope, because the problem can be avoided. These problems are neither unsolvable nor will they exist forever. Our society is fully capable of taking on a new look, because the power of cooperation among people cannot be underestimated.

But in addition to strength, we must find a way. One question we can't avoid is: Do we believe that residential justice is the basic right of being born as a human being?

The United States has a lofty founding spirit. The founding fathers shouted that everyone is equal, and "the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" cannot be deprived. These three spirits are closely related to America. Martyrs call it a human right endowed by God, and a stable home is the starting point of the three.

Life and home are two sides of the same body, which can hardly be separated and exist independently. With a home, there is privacy and security, and people can be protected and nourished. As a concept, the connotation of freedom is never limited to freedom of belief and personal freedom, but also includes our freedom to get ahead: we should be able to choose our favorite occupation to make a living and have the opportunity to acquire new skills. A stable home allows us to achieve economic autonomy through hard work, and also allows us to express ourselves conditionally. We should be able to be employed with reasonable remuneration and enjoy personal freedom.

What about happiness? Seeing Arlene buy him a pair of sports shoes, the smile on Qiao Rui's face is happiness; While humming a hymn, Larry is tasting happiness while cooking well. The Hinkstons, who burst into laughter because someone was cheated successfully, were also surrounded by happiness. The so-called pursuit of happiness undoubtedly includes material pursuit: at least to ensure the basic needs of life. Have you ever wondered how much happiness and talent will come to an end just because poverty is so overwhelming in the United States, just because we have made a decision not to take care of all citizens and not to ensure that everyone can live in peace?

In the United States, we have guaranteed the sense of security for the elderly, the twelve-year state religion, and the basic nutrition for all citizens. We think these are the basic rights of being born in America. We will guarantee these things, because we know that we must ensure the supply of basic human needs, so that the pursuit of survival dignity will not be the pursuit of fish. And who can say that living is not a basic need of people? A living environment with suitable housing conditions and reasonable prices should definitely be everyone's basic human right, and the reason is not puzzling at all: if you can't even talk about safe living, everything else will be built on quicksand.