We visited my job placement today!--the Education Center at Ethel R. Lawrence Homes, an affordable housing development in Mount Laurel, NJ. The homes are very nice. The Ed Center is in a double-wide trailer.
I’m still not sure what I think of the concept though, even after hearing the spiel for a third time... Luckily, I don’t have any qualms about what I’m doing, which is helping the kids with their schoolwork. It’s the larger mission of the housing development that I’m not sure I buy into. In a way, it does just seem like a band-aid and not a real solution to the root of the problem: endemic urban poverty. It doesn’t improve the cities by taking the well-behaved poor families away and putting them in a suburb…
On the other hand, one article I read talked about it in terms of providing housing for the people who are already working in these wealthy communities but can’t afford to live there. That makes sense to me. It's a very different principle than the first one, but I guess they kind of go hand in hand, in a way...
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