Homework 10:

The Public Debate over Public Housing: Heritage Foundation vs. the Legal Aid Society on the Quality Housing and Work Responsibility Act

(1) All assignments from HW 3 on are due at the start of class and must be turned in by dropbox; details on blackboard's digital dropbox are here; if you do not use microsoft word, be sure to follow these directions

(2) BE SURE TO FOLLOW THE FILE-NAMING CONVENTIONS FOR THIS COURSE IF YOU DROPBOX.

All files should be saved on your computer as: your last name, followed by an underscore ("_"), followed by the first two letters of your first name, followed by an underscore ("_"), followed by the assignment number. So if a student named Saddam Hussein were to submit assignment number 2, the file name would be:

hussein_sa_10.doc

THIS IS ASSIGNMENT 10

In this assignment you will be both analyzing actual public debate over public housing and simulating (and thus, preparring for) your own participation in such debates. Rather than writing a typical college essay, you will be crafting a script for your own (hypothetical) statements within a real debate.

There are two readings for this assignments: the first is the transcript from a 2003 debate on CNN and the second details the history of the Federal Government's direct and indirect financial support for suburban expansion.

The subject of the assignment is the Quality Housing and Work Responsibility Act which required adult residents of pubic housing, with some exemptions, to perform a minimum of eight hours of community service in order to mantain the tenancy.

In 1998, while Congress debated the proposed legislation, the media covered the issue extensively. This assignment asks that you imagine yourself as an expert partaking in those debates.

This assignment consists of five parts:

Melissa Pardue, Heritage Foundation (H.F. photo) see Pardue's writings for the Heritage Doundation here

Step 1: Read the transcript of the CNN Debate, see here. This debate took place between Melissa Pardue of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank, and Judith Goldiner of the Legal Aid Society, a liberal advocacy organization.

Step 2: Answer these questions on the CNN debate (use a sentence or two to answer each):

A) To what other Government program does the speaker from the Hertigage Foundation (Melissa Pardue) liken public housing? How does she do so?

B) To what other Government program does Pardue NOT liken public housing that Judith Goldiner of the Legal Aid Society DOES?

Step 3: Read the “Other Subsidized Housing," in From Tenements to the Taylor Homes ( p. 163 - 173) by Hanchett (available on electronic reserves)

Step 4: Now, using your knowledge of the various forms of Government subsidies for housing, rewrite Judith Goldiner's portion of the debate while leaving Pardue's as it is. Keeping Pardue's words intact while changing Goldiner's shouldn't be a problem since -- as you likely noticed -- the two speakers don't actually address each other's arguments. Indeed, in rewriting Goldiner, you should aim to to respond to Pardue more thoroughly than Goldiner did in the CNN exchange.

When you rewrite Goldiner, you should employ what you have learned in this class. Be sure to include specifics from your reading with citations. So, for example, you might write: