Assignment 1: Mapping The Wicked Problem and Stakeholder Relationships
The Topic — Homelessness
According to the Pittsburgh Resiliency Report, providing safe and affordable housing to Pittsburgh residents is one of the key priorities for the City Government of Pittsburgh.
According to the Oxford Encyclopedia of Social Work, homelessness is formally defined by the United States government as to when a person “lacks a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence, and if they sleep in a shelter designated for temporary living accommodations or in places not designated for human habitation.”
While homelessness may, at first sight, seem like a problem that is restricted to just people without a shelter, the homeless population has populations of both people with shelters or homes and people without.
From the accounts of Dr. Jim Withers, the street doctor, high levels of illnesses were discovered within the homeless population. So while we are trying to understand the scope and extent of a wicked problem, it is worth noting than rather than countries being developed or developing, contexts are developed or developing. Homelessness causes critical areas of developing contexts where it becomes important to reframe the definitions of home and belonging rather than solving the wicked problems with bandaid solutions that come from thinking of the problem at the same level.
The roots of homelessness in Pittsburgh have connections with the rising costs of healthcare, living, the rise of the opioid epidemic and a significant amount of racial segregation in Pittsburgh neighborhoods.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), defines the homeless only as those people who live on streets and in temporary housing or in public places as homeless. However, that definition fails to cover the larger question at hand around evictions that have a relationship with the race of the population.
The 2008 depression as the housing crisis caused an increase in the homeless population, which included school-going children. The paradigm of land ownership and leasing has created a power dynamic within the landlord and tenant relationship that skews in favor of the landlord. In discussing the extent and reach of this wicked problem and its relevance to Pittsburgh, reframing the wicked problem in itself is a part of uncovering the wicked problem.
The homeless population peaked during historically crucial events like after the civil war, when mental health patients deinstitutionalized, during the 2008 housing crisis.
At a national level, the Federal government has initiatives that help cover the needs of homeless youth. The McKinney Vento act defines “homeless children and youths” as “individuals who lack a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence.” Lacking any one of these three conditions would make a child eligible. In other words, if the residence is not fixed, regular, and adequate, it is considered a homeless situation.
As Matthew Desmond outlines in his book Evicted, poverty is profitable for a select few. At the heart of the wicked problem, it is important to uncover the economic and business implications of the state of homelessness and people living in temporary housing.
Initial Research and Understanding
For Initial Research we started collecting resources and references to understand homelessness more deeply. Through our discussions, we came to share this idea of how homelessness manifests in different forms in the countries we come from. For example, in India, urban areas with dense populations have localities where informal settlements come up (also called Slums). Urbanization has a crucial relationship with the density of the homeless population. The laws and reality are often at tension with each other. Laws and regulations to maintain city sanitation and safety decriminalize homeless people and try to ensure that public spaces are as non-conducive for homeless people to live.
The key themes (through the STEEP framework) important to understanding homelessness in Pittsburgh were:
- The Opioid epidemic leading to homelessness
- Racial segregation and redlining in neighborhoods
- The rising elderly population, not enough job opportunities for young professionals
- Cost of living far exceeding Minimum wages
1a. Mapping the Wicked Problem
Working Process:
Gathering themes from research → Brain Dump!
Categorizing them by the STEEP Framework
Sorting, adding and modifying primary secondary root causes and consequences.
Drawing connections between causes and consequences and across categories
Through the process of wicked problem mapping we began to zoom in and zoom out of the STEEP areas to explore likely and unlikely interconnections. There are dozens of narratives that can be discerned from the Wicked Problem Map and that help to tell the complex story that today leaves approximately 800 Pittsburgh residents find themselves homeless/shelterless every night.
We’ve surfaced seven significant narratives that incorporate factors from each of the STEEP categories.
- Racist History and Policy
- Defunding and Privatization of Public Housing
- Economic and population Decline and Job Loss
- Acute and Trauma and Abuse
- Health and Medical Industry
- Underfunded Social Programs
- Globalization and Mass Migration
1b. Mapping Stakeholder relationships
For stakeholder map, we realized 3 groups were not enough, so we started with 5 groups: homeless community, non-profit & government service providers, policy makers, housing-related groups, and groups affected relatively directly. Then, we reorganized, and added another stakeholder group — non-human factors.
Here is the 6 groups we identified:
- Homeless Community;
- It is important to note that we categorized homelessness into forced and chosen groups as we are trying to reframe homelessness, while they are generally broken down into 4 types: chronic, episodic, transitional, and hidden. However, there are variations in definition to homelessness, which make it difficult to understand homeless issues.
- Local Community,
- Financial & Corporate Establishments,
- Policy Makers & Government
- Non-profit & Government Service Providers,
- Non-human Factors.
As shown in the image above, we visualized the relational ecosystem from which interesting patterns show up:
- Most conflicts are spreaded out from or surrounding housing-related financial establishments; There are substantial internal conflicts within this stakeholder groups,
- Non-human factors have relatively more symbiotic relations with other stakeholders;
- There are many mixed relations around government and policy makers.
Overall, there are much more conflict and mixed relations than symbiotic relations on the map. Since homelessness is a wicked problem that connects deeper to humanity than the built physical world, the complexity of the relations between stakeholders and even within each stakeholder group was a challenge for us. For example, in financial & corporate establishment, landlords’ position and seems to be partly opposite to other financial groups as they could be in debt, …. Also, homeless community is a very complicated group in that they have large variety of groups, such as people of color, substance abusers, homeless youth, mental health community, each having various circumstantial causes, such as emergency, disability, etc.
It’s important to note that there are many different ways that those lacking long-term and safe shelter are categorized…
Team relationship to the topic
Erica: I gravitated to the topic of homelessess for several reasons. Firstly, I’ve worked in economic development and community building for over a decade, the mission of which has been to help build local living economies where all members of the local economy find we can belong and thrive. I’m driven to build inclusive local economies partially because the four main cities I’ve lived in throughout my life all have high amounts of people without sustainable shelter — Denver, San Francisco, New York, and Portland. It’s an urban reality that leaves me feeling helpless and deeply saddened. How is it that we tolerate living well amongst so many others who are suffering and what can we do about it? What hits closest to home is that my uncle was homeless for over thirty years. When I was listed as his next-of-kin, I was forced to face the realities of how he maneuvered through life homeless — I uncovered an incredible community that had supported him as well as haunting evidence of just how broken our health, social, and economic systems have become. I cannot tolerate living in a wealthy democracy will so many suffer.
Sanika: I was interested in developing and developed contexts rather than developing and developed countries. The homeless population and government initiatives driven towards their needs are different yet similar to the affordable housing and slum rehabilitation real estate development that happens in Mumbai city. Even though homelessness is called to be a wicked problem, statistically, the number of homeless people without shelter, is much lower than those in India. Yet, despite being from aso called ‘developing country’ I am more than aware of the privilege I have. Family legacy in India, entitles offsprings to be the inherent owners of housing property based on the will of the deceased. Being raised in a culture of children not being expected to go out and look for money, housing and education on their own, was a concept alien to me. We discussed the idea of broken social contacts in our team, and I learnt the broader definition of the term homelessness much more than I realised at its face value.
Amanda: It was interesting diving deeply into homelessness in the context of Pittsburgh. Like many other poorly planned cities, Pittsburgh’s infrastructure was not set up for success. Although homelessness is a pervasive issue here in Pittsburgh, there are many other cities that suffer even more greatly. From our research there are a plethora of initiatives and organizations working with populations that are oppressed by our socio-economic system. Maybe Pittsburgh should lend a hand to other cities because their homeless population is getting smaller. It was tough to grasp or understand just how many people were in not great living conditions. Because through our research we realized you don’t have to physically be outside to be homeless, You can live inside of a structure but lack a feeling of belonging, rendering one homeless.
Kate: I visited Los Angeles before this semester started, and homelessness is a giant issue there. It is impossible to avoid talking to people/citizens from LA on the problem of homelessness. It was very interesting to hear different attitudes or opinions towards homeless people, and stakeholders that are more directly related to them. Also, these different attitudes, such as complaint, empathy, can come from the same stakeholder group, which make the wicked problem more complicated. Meanwhile, Pittsburgh is a city with different weather, culture, economy and history background from LA. I am intrigued to see how these factors impact homelessness issue here in Pittsburgh, and make it different from other cities.
Reflections
Challenges
Difficulties
Insights
