Introduction to the Housing Justice Audit
Disclaimer
The Observer Effect posits that the act of monitoring a system inherently changes its state. The systemic truth of Reciprocity is you cannot touch something without being touched by it, and you cannot look at something without changing what it is.
So, by continuing to read, you agree you are self-selecting to enter the System of the Housing Justice Audit as, if those principles bear out, you will both impact the system by your attention to it and be impacted by the system in response.
This particular system is intended to have a purpose that you can embrace and integrate it into your being, once you have absorbed it enough to evaluate its merit: to unify investors, property managers, and tenants through a
Shared reverence of the shelter life stories play out in.
which is a systemic truth that was discovered more than it was invented.This Audit and Intervention is a precedent-supported and innovative systems study and intervention into Charleston SC's Housing Justice System as a microcosm of Housing in general in the United States. It is also a documentary of the discovery and implementation of that systemic truth by testing the system chain's weakest link: how it takes care of its Most Vulnerable Members, or MVMs. A well designed system takes care of its MVMs. Without that, it lack system resilience.
How resilient is the system of Housing Justice in Charleston, SC? And what does that say about the roots of the housing crisis in Charleston and - if those roots are systemic and prevalent - elsewhere?
Keep reading for well-formed answers to those highly relevant questions.
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Lost in the desert
I recall a speaker at a seminar telling a story that was a Monty Python skit, or maybe she just said it was like a Monty Python skit. I thought I had seen all of them but I didn't remember this one.
A group of travelers breaks down on a lonely dirt road in the middle of rolling hills that seem to go nowhere and everywhere at the same time. But the truck is stone dead, with smoke pouring from under the hood and the pinging of rapidly cooling hot metal. The horizon shimmers with heat in every direction. They shrug and start walking.
The food runs out first. Then the water. The sun presses down like a hand on their skulls. They stop talking and occasionally one or more stumbles from fatigue. Eventually, they crawl, faces to the sand, pulling themselves forward by their fingertips, one arm's length at a time.
Until one of them looks up.
"What about the camera crew?"
And the camera crew enters the frame, bright-eyes, nourished, and happy, sharing their sandwiches and popping open water bottles. The travelers drink, eat, stand up, brush themselves off. They join forces with the crew and all resume walking.
They walk for miles until the supplies dwindle again and, with the orange sun slipping behind the last hill, one pauses, holding his hand to get the group to pause. He points and they all look up and to the right ..
"Look — there's another camera crew."
And a the second crew steps into the frame, carrying its own sandwiches and even a portable grill they fire up. Then the group stumbles onto something unexpected ...
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