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Community & Behavioral Health | Recovery | Social Change

ChangingTheConversation-NewBlogTitle-1

Changing the Conversation

Insecurity – Stories of Growing Up

families

Security. This is something I’ve been thinking a lot about recently. I grew up in a home marked by addiction, dysfunction, and for a period of time, poverty. While I knew my parents loved me, my father’s alcoholism set the tone for much of my childhood. As I got older, left home, and engaged in my own much healthier relationships, I thought I had escaped unscathed. In many ways, my sibling took away some of the more common traits of being raised by an alcoholic parent, but I didn’t seem to carry these with me.

Federal Commitment Necessary to End Homelessness

It is very difficult to live on the edge, the periphery of being housed while others make life and death decisions based on available dollars—focusing primarily on money rather than safety and quality of life. An exclusive group of federal legislators allocate funds for services and supports to end homelessness. Being dependent on housing subsidies subject to periodic budget cuts while the elite holders of the purse strings are economically secure is very hard to digest and tolerate.

Not One Child. Not One Night.

To kick-off Homelessness Awareness Month, we are posting this blog by Ellen Bassuk, MD that originally appeared on Huffington Post on October 8, 2015 at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ellen-l-bassuk/not-one-child-not-one-nig_b_8258580.html.

How can it be in a country as affluent as the United States that 2.5 million children are homeless each year? Although the numbers are climbing, family homelessness is absent from our nation's agenda.

What Kind of Cities Do We Want?

Steven Samra’s report on the impact of gentrification on homeless and unstably housed people in Nashville is echoed by stories from cities across the world. The decision by the owner to sell the James Roberson apartment building, a 124 unit, Section 8 eligible residence in downtown Nashville, is a symptom of pervasive forces re-shaping urban environments. If we wish to respond meaningfully to these changes it is important to acknowledge that the shape of our cities, like any other human endeavor, is guided by a series of intentional practices. These practices are made. However, if we act, they can be unmade and different practices installed. The question is, what kind of city do we want?