In this series, Peter Block offers more context and nuance in his approach to shifting the community narrative. The essence is to invite people to connect using the Six Conversations from his book Community: The Structure of Belonging. The series is also more interesting than a talking head.

The Six Conversations
By Peter Block

Learn more about Peter Block and his work at www.abundantcommunity.com.

The Severe Health Consequences of Housing Instability
By Frances Gill

The relationship between housing and health is intuitive and multifaceted. Causal pathways linking housing and individual health include everything from environmental health concerns (lead poisoning in old homes, for an example) to neighborhood characteristics (walkability, safety, access to affordable supermarkets) to the psychosocial stress of financial instability.

The latter is of particular interest to public health researchers because the health effects of financially-related housing instability are so far reaching. Rent burdened households — i.e. households that spend more than 30 percent of their monthly income on rent — suffer profound health consequences as a direct result of their housing status. As more and more American households become rent-burdened, the downstream health consequences experienced by these households need to be articulated and addressed, preferably by upstream solutions.

A rent burdened household is less likely to be able to afford sufficient food, to have a usual source of medical care, or to seek needed medical treatment. In fact, a rent burdened household is more likely to ultimately use the emergency room for medical treatment, potentially at a later, more severe, less treatable point in the disease course.

Housing stability in the U.S. is threatened by rising rents, inadequate housing stock, and poor access to legal resources to fight evictions. (The NYC Right to Counsel Coalition estimates that half of evictions wouldn’t have occurred if residents had had an attorney). Housing instability itself — which can be broadly defined as falling behind on rent, moving frequently, or experiencing a period of homelessness — is associated with enormous health consequences: poorer self-reported health and more frequent hospitalizations for both parents and children.

The actual experience of losing one’s home also has a litany of associated negative health outcomes. In a systematic review of scientific literature on home foreclosures and health, researchers noted significant associations between foreclosures and higher body mass index, higher systolic blood pressure, a greater frequency of psychological distress queries, poorer reported health, a higher number of positive depression screens and self-reported anxiety attacks, an increased number of service calls about domestic violence, higher rates of suicide, increased number of emergency visits and hospitalizations, higher rates of alcohol dependence, lower rates of health insurance, higher rates of cost-related unmet health needs, and higher rates of cost-related prescription non-adherence.

In one study, the authors found that an outbreak of West Nile Virus in California was likely related to a rise in the number of abandoned swimming pools because there were so many foreclosed homes in the area.

The distribution of housing instability also falls more heavily on people of color: 54.7% of Black households were categorized as rent burdened in 2015, while only 42.7% of White households were. Racial health disparities (chronic disease burdens, cancer rates and mortality, geographic access to health care, to name just a few) have been studied for more than half a century but still remain stable, and some researchers have speculated that persistent residential segregation is one of the common threads that links many of these disparities together.

The health problems associated with housing are very well documented, and they are also often very expensive. Health care delivery systems, eager to save money by decreasing hospitalizations and decreasing emergency room utilization, are keenly aware of potential solutions. In Oregon, Massachusetts, New York, and Vermont, state Medicaid programs have sought waivers allowing them to spend Medicaid funds on more broadly defined social services, including providing permanent shelter for patients experiencing homelessness. Hospitals in Illinois have partnered with the Department of Housing and Urban Development to fund permanent supportive housing for homeless patients. Doing so is ultimately much cheaper than paying for the emergency care that homeless and unstably housed patients often seek.

Another approach involves intervening earlier by providing financial support to families so that they can move out of high-poverty neighborhoods. A randomized controlled trial conducted in five cities in the mid-1990’s demonstrated that when residents of low-income neighborhoods were provided with vouchers to move to high-income neighborhoods and provided assistance facilitating that move, they had significantly lower rates of diabetes, obesity, and psychological distress. Participants in this trial who were children at the time of the move were more likely to attend college, had higher average earnings, and lower rates of single parenthood. Another study showed that children who experienced a period of homeless in utero were more likely to have fair or poor health and to be at risk for developmental delays.

Among the many social determinants of health, housing is of particular interest to both public health researchers and community activists alike. The need for stable and affordable housing is felt urgently by communities, and this emergency is manmade: municipal politics that serve the interests of the wealthy have led to decisions that have drained our cities of affordable housing and drastically exacerbated rates of homelessness in many American cities. There’s no shortage of research that demonstrates the health consequences this will have, but it remains to be seen whether there will be a shortage of political will to meaningfully address these issues.

This article was originally published by The People’s Policy Project

The Common Good podcast is a conversation about the significance of place, eliminating economic isolation and the structure of belonging. For this episode, we’ll hear the Abundant Community Conversation between David Cayley, Peter Block and John McKnight. Every couple of months the Common Good Collective helps to produce these interactive conversations on Zoom and they always contain music or poetry, small groups and an exploration of a particular theme with a community practitioner. In this Abundant Community Conversation, John and Peter speak with David Cayley about Ivan Illich and his understanding of freedom and friendship.

David Cayley is a Canadian writer and broadcaster. He has produced and presented hundreds of radio documentaries, including two five-hour series with Ivan Illich, and published seven books, among them The Rivers North of the Future: The Testament of Ivan Illich & Ivan Illich: An Intellectual Journey.

Courtney Napier sings a rendition of Nina Simone’s “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free.” She is a freelance journalist and writer from Raleigh, North Carolina. She is the founder of Black Oak Society —a community of Black writers and artists in the greater Raleigh area—and the editor of BOS Zine. Her work can be found in INDY Week and Scalawag Magazine, as well as on her blog, Courtney Has Words. Courtney chose to write because she wanted the untold stories of marginalized residents to be shared and preserved for generations to come. Her spouse and two children are a daily source of love and inspiration. She is also in charge of the Common Good Reader.

Be on the lookout for upcoming Abundant Community Conversations. You can find more information about the Common Good Collective at commongood.cc. This episode has been guest hosted and produced by me, Joey Taylor and the music is from Jeff Gorman.

4 Telling

By Tracie Morris, Harryette Mullen, Jo Stewart, and Yolanda Wisher

If  I am black and beautiful, I really am and I know it and I don’t care who cares or says what. —Nina Simone

No bitter peach or stranger fruit
grafted to a noble tree,
she takes her place in lineage

areola diversity, oracular
who looks to see, edges of a baby’s ear,
that child’s cuticles

in line though long shot to a throne.
How dark might she be?
How dark becomes her loveliness!

A newborn beauty in the world
old as being human.
Her own indivisible soul—

the brine’s—the duct’s—bumps in air’s chill.
Liquid wafts under
the corpuscle’s depth, hue

not one drop dilution or taint.
Showing all her colors, still too soon
to know how history hurts.

A black wail is a killer, puller into deep
half moon occludes an area
waves fan out sonic chuch

a smooth meadow rose is as black as the beach
plum, black huckleberry is black huckleberry, blue
berry is also black, a black broadest in the middle.

What else prompts imagining of her?
Bubble lineation here, here,
from oxygenature on down

above, glory as corkscrew: iron-like humor,
infinite symbols conversant toward heave,
athwart defiled gravitation

hotcomb hero hoofin it
hominy harbor unbothered
guayabera grill guise

rockin that radiator rah rah
shakin that shortcake shekere
mic check missy, a miracle

coloratura marrow, true voice on the blackhand side
how we can “tell” beyond inflection points,
a throat’s tinge

skeletal black, muscular black, breathing
from a black organ, black time passes behind
the black minute, other black dimensions

gohonzon gals harmonizing
scriptured baby hairs scissoring
some bodies to believe in, some body to bleed

peel off in black layers, limber and black at
flowering time, the fear of black, not black
but black, bone-black, sudden-black

Source: Poetry (November 2021) from Poetry Foundation

How housing that mixes young and old can improve the lives of both
By Matt Fuchs

Research has shown that older and younger adults need one another: Mixed-age interactions make seniors feel more purposeful, and young people benefit from their elders’ guidance and problem-solving skills. “They fit together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle,” said Marc Freedman, chief executive of encore.org, a nonprofit group dedicated to uniting the generations.

But in practice, such closeness can be hard to come by. Many young adults flock to cities, while older people often isolate within the walls of 55-and-over communities. Parts of the country are as segregated by age as race, fewer people are having children, and people live by themselves in record numbers, including 27 percent of adults over 60.

“Older and younger people are two of the loneliest groups in society,” Freedman said. “We have to be as creative in bringing them together as we’ve been in separating them out.”

One solution is establishing residential communities that are designed to nurture these bonds.
“There’s a trend toward intergenerational living,” said Elin Zurbrigg, deputy director of Mi Casa, a D.C. nonprofit that provides mixed-age housing through its Genesis program, in collaboration with city officials. Demand may be rising because of the pandemic, which has exposed loneliness as a serious health issue and has prompted many Americans to move for fresh starts. I talked to experts and residents about the ways that mixed-age interaction supports well-being — and how to cultivate those relationships, regardless of where you live.

How mixed-age communities benefit their residents

They cultivate purpose. Many people prefer to socialize with their same-age peers, but age matters less if individuals share a common purpose, said Cornell sociologist and author Karl Pillemer.

A shared purpose with neighbors is what Estelle Winicki, a 78-year-old retiree, always envisioned for herself, but finding that wasn’t easy. In Boulder, Colo., she rarely crossed paths with neighbors. Retirement homes looked nice, but “everybody’s old,” she said. Five years ago, her therapist suggested Bridge Meadows, which operates two complexes of townhouses in Oregon that bring together seniors, former foster-care children and their adoptive parents. Residents are encouraged to spend time with their age opposites.

Winicki, who lives at Bridge Meadows in Portland, doesn’t need persuasion. She starts many of her days helping her neighbors’ children get ready for school. “It gives me such pleasure to see these kids grow with a strong foundation,” she said. “They know they can rely on me, and I like helping.”

They provide mental health support. “The first thing you see among all the generations [at Bridge Meadows] is the sense of ‘I belong’ and ‘I matter,’ ” said Derenda Schubert, Bridge Meadows’ founder and a clinical psychologist. Such an environment allows mixed-age communities such as Bridge Meadows to provide safety nets that protect residents’ mental health.

Kristina Fleming, 23, suffered from depression before moving to Genesis, a 27-unit building in D.C.’s Takoma neighborhood where seniors live next to young adults transitioning from foster care with their own kids. At previous residences, “people didn’t care about my feelings,” said Fleming, who has a 7-year-old. “We were just neighbors.” At Genesis, the elders relate to her mental health challenges, she said. When she’s feeling down, they ask what’s wrong, and she confides in them. “We’re all one — different ages, races, ethnicities.”

Fleming, a college student, is an example of how mixed-age relationships can also boost self-esteem. Last year, she taught elderly residents to use tablets to photograph the community’s garden. Enriching their lives during the pandemic made her feel helpful and content, a connection that has been shown in research.

They offer professional advantages. In other communities, the generational glue is professional. PacArts, a mixed-age building in the San Pedro area of Los Angeles, provides affordable housing to artists. Luis Sanchez, a 53-year-old painter, said he can count on his neighbors whether he’s having a rough patch with health — he’s had two kidney transplants — or his work. An older neighbor has hired him repeatedly to assist with large painting projects. “I’ve learned a tremendous amount,” Sanchez said. “She knows techniques and materials I would’ve never used.”

Eva Kochikyan is a musicologist and teacher residing at Ace 121, a similar building in Los Angeles County. “It’s a close community, because we’re all artists,” she said. She grew up in Armenia, where residents socialized regardless of age, but after relocating to Los Angeles, she barely saw her neighbors. In moving to Ace 121, the 41-year-old re-created the experience of a big extended family.

“It’s almost like having several grandparents,” said Tim Carpenter, chief executive of EngAge, a nonprofit that provides these buildings with mixed-age programming such as exercise classes.

Kochikyan recalled her 4-year-old wandering into the building’s communal art studio, sitting right next to an accomplished painter in his 70s and picking up a brush. “No lecturing, just working together,” she said. “These connections happen naturally.”

They may keep older people active. Seniors may get more movement when inspired by the vigor of youth. “Older people might try to keep up with younger ones,” said Thomas Cudjoe, a professor of geriatric medicine at Johns Hopkins University.

Kochikyan thought of a neighbor as an “old grandma” after watching her frown during a solo workout. Since then, though, the baby boomer has befriended a group of children who enjoy kicking her yoga ball with her. During these sessions, her intensity picks up and her face lights up, Kochikyan said, “like she drops 20 years off her age.”

Research suggests this estimate isn’t far off. Older adults spending time with kids saw large upticks in strength and physical activity in a clinical trial of volunteers at elementary schools in Baltimore, for example.

How mixed-age interactions can aid the larger community

Intergenerational examples are increasing in type and number. But a few communities provide what residents see as the best of both worlds: same-age living, along with interactions with youngsters away from home. These interactions, too, can benefit both old and young. Here are a few examples.

They can develop social purpose through volunteering. At Sun City, a large 55-and-over community in Georgetown, Tex., north of Austin, residents run scores of clubs that volunteer locally with children.

“Sun City is amazing,” said Georgetown resident Jenny Phillips, who works for Sun City’s homeowners association and considers its residents models of civic engagement for her two kids. She describes the sea of gray hair that cheers Georgetown High School’s sports teams, and how “they’re cleaning a parking lot after a community-wide garage sale raising scholarship money for underprivileged kids.”

The Sun City example shows that retirement communities can, like Bridge Meadows and Genesis, unite the generations through a social purpose. Older people, especially retirees, often have the time it takes to develop genuine connections. “They won’t form if you’re in a hurry,” said Freedman, author of “How to Live Forever.” “It’s like baking a souffle. If you rush, it collapses.”

Some elders prefer how Sun City draws boundaries around the mixed-age socializing, so teenagers aren’t blasting music next door. “In facilitating these connections,” Cudjoe said, “we should be sensitive to concerns that younger people may be disruptive.”

They can help youngsters learn and seniors keep their brains sharp. Experience Corps, co-founded by Freedman and now run by AARP, offers another form of mixed-age interaction: older people tutoring kids in reading. In a study of the adult participants, scans showed enhanced brain volume in areas susceptible to dementia.

What to be careful of when mixing generations

Pillemer, the Cornell sociologist, ran a Legacy Project for older people to share their practical wisdom. One of his programs matches groups of kids to an elder with similar experiences — being an immigrant, for example. The kids design questions, conduct interviews and present what they learned to the broader community.

Some high schools and retirement homes are embracing this program. But, Pillemer warned, “if you throw older and younger people together without preparation, it can have negative effects.” His research shows that training is critical. For example, older trainees can build resilience to ageist attitudes.

Winicki, the Portland retiree, also said training is important. Recently, she promised her 12-year-old neighbor a fun outing if he could explain the high-tech dashboard of her new car. At first, he operated the controls at warp speed, expecting her to learn by watching. “Kids know the systems so well,” she said, “they don’t need their hands on the technology to understand.” But he wasn’t teaching another kid. “Let me do it!” she told him. He adapted his style. Then she guided the vehicle to the nearest ice cream parlor, where they enjoyed their reward.

This article was originally published in the Washington Post.

World vs Individuality
By Judith Butler

However differently we register this pandemic we understand it as global; it brings home the fact that we are implicated in a shared world. The capacity of living human creatures to affect one another can be a matter of life or death. Because so many resources are not equitably shared, and so many have only a small or vanished share of the world, we cannot recognize the pandemic as global without facing those inequalities.

Some people work for the common world, keep it going, but are not, for that reason, of it. They might lack property or papers, be sidelined by racism or even disdained as refuse—those who are poor, Black or brown, those with unpayable debts that preclude a sense of an open future.

The shared world is not equally shared. The French philosopher Jacques Rancière refers to “the part of those who have no part”—those for whom participation in the commons is not possible, never was, or no longer is. For it is not just resources and companies in which a share is to be had, but a sense of the common, a sense of belonging to a world equally, a trust that the world is organized to support everyone’s flourishing.

The pandemic has illuminated and intensified racial and economic inequalities at the same time that it heightens the global sense of our obligations to one another and the earth. There is movement in a global direction, one based on a new sense of mortality and interdependency. The experience of finitude is coupled with a keen sense of inequalities: Who dies early and why, and for whom is there no infrastructural or social promise of life’s continuity?

This sense of the interdependency of the world, strengthened by a common immunological predicament, challenges the notion of ourselves as isolated individuals encased in discrete bodies, bound by established borders. Who now could deny that to be a body at all is to be bound up with other living creatures, with surfaces, and the elements, including the air that belongs to no one and everyone?

Within these pandemic times, air, water, shelter, clothing and access to health care are sites of individual and collective anxiety. But all these were already imperiled by climate change. Whether or not one is living a livable life is not only a private existential question, but an urgent economic one, incited by the life-and-death consequences of social inequality: Are there health services and shelters and clean enough water for all those who should have an equal share of this world? The question is made more urgent by conditions of heightened economic precarity during the pandemic, exposing as well the ongoing climate catastrophe for the threat to livable life that it is.

Pandemic is etymologically pandemos, all the people, or perhaps more precisely, the people everywhere, or something that spreads over or through the people. The “demos” is all the people despite the legal barriers that seek to separate them. A pandemic, then, links all the people through the potentials of infection and recovery, suffering and hope, immunity and fatality. No border stops the virus from traveling if humans travel; no social category secures absolute immunity for thoseit includes.

“The political in our time must start from the imperative to reconstruct the world in common,” argues Cameroonian philosopher Achille Mbembe. If we consider the plundering of the earth’s resources for the purposes of corporate profit, privatization and colonization itself as planetary project or enterprise, then it makes sense to devise a movement that does not send us back to our egos and identities, our cut-off lives.

Such a movement will be, for Mbembe, “a decolonization [which] is by definition a planetary enterprise, a radical openness of and to the world, a deep breathing for the world as opposed to insulation.” The planetary opposition to extraction and systemic racism ought to then deliver us back to the world, or let the world arrive, as if for the first time, a shared place for “deep breathing”—a desire we all now know.

And yet, an inhabitable world for humans depends on a flourishing earth that does not have humans at its center. We oppose environmental toxins not only so that we humans can live and breathe without fear of being poisoned, but also because the water and the air must have lives that are not centered on our own.

As we dismantle the rigid forms of individuality in these interconnected times, we can imagine the smaller part that human worlds must play on this earth whose regeneration we depend upon—and which, in turn, depends upon our smaller and more mindful role.

This article was first published on Time

Neighbors in October
By David Baker

All afternoon his tractor pulls a flat wagon
with bales to the barn, then back to the waiting
chopped field. It trails a feather of smoke.
Down the block we bend with the season:
shoes to polish for a big game,
storm windows to batten or patch.
And how like a field is the whole sky now
that the maples have shed their leaves, too.
It makes us believers—stationed in groups,
leaning on rakes, looking into space. We rub blisters
over billows of leaf smoke. Or stand alone,
bagging gold for the cold days to come.

This poem was originally published on Poetry Foundation.