Update on Project Activities
We, along with all other groups in the class, created our first deliverable last week! We finalized our Scope of Work and created a presentation to showcase our ideas to the class. As per the schedule that we’ve set up in our SoW, this week was our first week of data collection in which we’ve each budgeted time to make 20 calls to former clients. Some challenges have already arisen as we each are trying to make time within our own busy schedules to make these calls. Additionally, we expect that this project will necessitate a calling strategy that involves the following criteria:
Since the next three weeks of our project is pretty straight forward in terms of deliverables and expectations, we have had limited communication with Jason. The extent of our contact has been an exchange of a view interesting articles. What We Observed/Learned Jazlyn was able to attend the housing event that was put on by CLS-EPA in conjunction with various partners on campus. It was interesting to hear the panelists, but the most intriguing and important part of the panel was the dynamic of the room. There were a large number of people who had been bused in to Stanford for the event, including high school children. When the Q&A section started, there was a distinct separation between the type of questions. On the one hand, there were the Stanford types who had intellectual curiosities, questions about policy and history. On the other, there were somewhat hostile questions from citizens of East Palo Alto, who were demanding support and change from those on the panel. As someone in the audience, I was brought back into the thoughts of where our place is with regards to service in EPA. No matter how humble we are, at the end of the day, they have to live with the problems that we are trying to fix. Most of the power and responsibility for this project is a bit out of our hands, yet we house all of the project’s risk. As a group, we’ve realized that if we don’t get enough survey responses, we’ll have limited data to work with. However, from what it seems, people are willing to talk to us if they’re called at the appropriate times. We also run the risk of having clients whose phone numbers are no longer functional or accurate. Critical Analysis Realistically speaking, our team may have underestimated the task of collecting the data. It is easy for us to slip into the mindset that the level of importance of our project to our group is equal to the level of public excitement to cooperate with their information. Our group members can see the potential for this project, but we are finding difficulty in coordinating the right times to contact people. In the grand scheme of things, our role in and to the community is miniscule. The value of the impact that this collection of data will make is based largely on the community that we wish to serve. However, the people in these very communities may not have the bandwidth necessary to be active participants. Their main priorities are based on general aspects of survival. The remaining time that they have is then dedicated to things other than answering our survey questions. The trouble that we are having contacting people will probably be beneficial to us for the duration of this project. The structure of our schedules do not lend themselves to time dedicated solely to telephone communication. Society has become so ingrained with efficient communication that can be done in tandem with other tasks, that we failed to see the major difference in the type and setting of communication that is necessary for this project. We now understand the need to better tailor our approach to data collection to be sensitive to the daily lifestyles of the former clients and re-evaluate our roles as people outside of the affected communities. This week our class reached an exciting milestone where each team presented their project scope of work developed in collaboration with community partners. Each team described the background information for the project, their detailed plan for outreach and data collection, as well as the broader significance of the project within the context of Bay Area sustainability. From here on out, we plan to delve deeper into our projects and dive right into fieldwork! 1) Update on Project Activities
In last week’s blog, we mentioned setting up logistical infrastructure for our project. This week, we set up the interface that will allow us to successfully interact with CLSEPA’s former clients. Jason, our community partner, emailed us survey questions for our review, which we later translated into Spanish. Some of the clients we will be speaking with do not understand English, so we created a script that will facilitate the translation process when speaking to them on the phone. After signing Non-disclosure Agreements and other volunteer paperwork, we were given the data for approximately 200 former clients, all of whom we are expected to call and collect more data from. Jason sent us a spreadsheet with all of the relevant data that he compiled for us in order to proceed with the project. Starting next week, we plan to start calling clients and recording information using a Google survey form that will easily compile the information for us. Our goal, moving forward, is to call approximately 20 clients per week each, which will give us space to try clients who don’t respond the first time again. Earlier this week, we were required to attend an ArcGIS workshop class, which we learned a lot from (thanks, David!). After we’ve collected some data from clients in this next week, we hope to come up with interesting and useful ways of representing our collected data using ArcGIS software. 2) What We Observed/Learned Signing the NDA and volunteer paperwork really opened our eyes: the project was becoming a little more “real.” We realized that we’ll be dealing with sensitive information and that we are expected to uphold a certain level of explicit trust with CLSEPA and implicit trust with the former clients. Deland also raised a good point in that our group should develop a strategy for having open conversations of affordable housing, sustainability, and other main themes, while remaining cognizant to maintain client confidentiality. We expect that it will be challenging to speak to some of these clients. Although our primary purpose is to collect data, our human nature is to empathize with their situation. Jason warned us that some clients may want someone to talk to about their situation on a more emotional and psychological level. In terms of volunteer-client interaction, our only expectation is to ask the survey questions and collect data, so we will need to learn to strike a balance between listening to former clients’ responses to survey questions and tangential stories that they may feel the need to express. The information that we collect will be a mixture of quantitative and qualitative. The challenge here is finding a meaningful way to represent it using ArcGIS software. In this week’s workshop, we learned of the infinite possibilities to use ArcGIS to map our data, and of how easy it is to convolute that data by including too much information. It is our priority to present our data in a fashion that is clear to understand and leaves little room for dispute. David Medeiros, Geospatial Instruction & Reference Specialist, made us aware of the wealth of information that the Geospatial Lab holds and the resources available to us as students. We really appreciated him taking the time to lead this workshop because the intricacies of both ArcMap and ArcGIS make these programs daunting for first time users. Before the ArcGIS workshop, our only focus was creating a map that showed the movement of people from their original residences to where they moved after eviction, however, we were shown tools that allow us to correspond this movement to other socioeconomic factors based on the layers we choose to invoke. One of the most interesting things that David touched upon was the difference between vector and raster images. Choosing between the more basic, geometric vector images and the complex, real-life raster images changed the aesthetic of the overall product immensely. With a basic understanding of the two ArcGIS programs under our belt, we are eager to begin collecting good data as a foundation for these future images. 3) Critical Analysis Even as we just first begin to make calls, it is already becoming clear that we will have to find a way to communicate the impact of their contributions. These are populations that have already been isolated and victimized by institutions that are supposed to protect them. It is our suspicion that it will be hard for them to trust us right off the bat. We will have to communicate with each other to figure out strategies that promote safeness and help them to understand where the information will be going and what impact it will have on public policy and future generations. In particular, since we are interfacing very personally with the populations, we will have to tread carefully about our Stanford affiliation. Our first step is setting up voicemails for our google voice accounts that align themselves with CLS-EPA and make it very clear who we are working for. The questions that we will be using for the survey were supplied by Jason and while we did some preliminary revision, it will be very important for us to have continual revision throughout the process. Part of sharing strategies will be to share how different people/populations react to certain questions or whether different wording will be more effective for the type of responses that we want. Along with communicating the impact of their responses, it will also be important that our final deliverable is accessible not just to policymakers, but to the populations that the evictions are impacting. We will have to work heavily with the GIS lab experts to create a map that is understandable to anyone that accesses it and needs the information. Ultimately, we’d like our final map to create a very clear mandate about the state of things now and what should be done about it. Update on Project Activities
Monday marked the start of our project with Jason Tarricone of Community Legal Services in East Palo Alto (CLSEPA). The extent of what we knew before that day was a 2-page blurb written about the services that CLSEPA provides to clients facing eviction in areas within and around East Palo Alto. During the meeting, Jason gave us an in-depth history of the Bay Area’s housing problem. He clearly relayed the expectations and desired outcome for this project, demographics for which to tailor our deliverables, and valuable suggestions for our future interactions with his clients. His enthusiasm and investment in this project and these people are infectious, causing our team to immediately want to hit the ground running.After the initial meeting, our team went to work on setting up the logistical infrastructure for our project to be successful. This entailed creating an email correspondence chain between ourselves and Jason, over which we are finalizing interview questions, creating the Google Voice account with which we will contact the former clients, and scheduling future meetings. Our group understands that the bulk of our project relies on the participation of the former clients, some of whom may be difficult to reach or communicate with, and thus, data collection should begin as soon as possible. What We Observed/Learned East Palo Alto—nestled between Facebook HQ, Google, several venture capitalist firms, and Stanford University—is considered the last 2.5-mile stretch of affordable housing in Silicon Valley. CLSEPA is trying to keep it that way and promote the idea that affordable housing needs to become more widespread in surrounding cities. Currently, CLSEPA holds a clinic every Thursday from 9am to 12pm where they represent clients that are at risk of being evicted from their homes. CLSEPA negotiates and litigates against landlords on serious housing problems that affect the health and safety of community members. Lawyers attempt to settle these cases brought on by clients’ landlords in order to grant clients more time in their place of residence. More time affords these clients the ability to save up money and/or find a new place to live to avoid homelessness. As part of the project, we’ve been asked to contact former clients via phone to ask them survey questions. We plan to focus on collecting quantitative data, which will emphasize the need for new legislation that will encourage a racially and socio-economically integrated community within Silicon Valley. Some of the questions we will ask the former clients are:
These and numerous other questions will help us identify if litigation against landlords is helping these clients; what patterns are emerging from clients’ movement out of their old homes and into new ones; and future steps that can be taken to protect future community members from losing their homes and furthering gentrification. Critical Analysis The current situation in East Palo Alto and other Bay Area cities tells the story of the unexpected consequences that comes with an industrial boom. The existing infrastructure for housing in EPA was not intended to support this movement of people to the valley. Critics of preserving affordable housing units state that it discourages new construction while encouraging alternative living situations, as in garages. The “Not in My Backyard” movement also perpetuates this stigma of rent controlled apartments as somehow degrading the status of a community. If this school of thought continues to spread, there won’t be any place left for these displaced people to go. In most parts of the country, housing prices are at or at least near the cost of construction. Here, in the Bay Area, we know that is definitely not the case. Providing enough housing for everyone is an entirely different problem, however, what CLSEPA aims to do is provide just outcomes for the people viewed as displaceable. Our contribution to their work is to provide concrete evidence of the problem to promote visibility and essentially a call to action. |
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