The assigned reading and articles have neither produced within me answers or brought down a blanket of solace, but have instead inspired questions, hopefully affording me the ability to frame them more appropriately. Here goes:

1. How can architecture help to resolve the fundamental problems that farm workers face? Ultimately, the problem boils down to the fact that they do not get paid enough to afford housing up to ‘US standards.’ There are a milieu of factors that are initiating this core problem, but are they not mainly a centrally social problem? Should the government require a minimum wage that is high enough to support one’s self and regulate effectively enough so that it is enforced, or should everything be left to the hand of market forces and indentured human greed? We can blame the problem on a lack of immigration enforcement, but ultimately we must realize that our standard of living can only be achieved by taking advantage of a majority of the world’s population. Could we encourage the economic development of our neighboring countries instead of exploiting them for labor so cheap that they cannot sustain their own livelihoods and risk passing illegally into our country for slightly better wages? What is wrong with our country? What then, is the role of architecture in solving this problem? Do we truly have a housing shorting, or just an affordable housing shortage? If this is true, is there a surplus in supply elsewhere? Does it make sense to build worker housing, if we can never build buildings as cheaply as those already built and amortized? Is this a fundamentally architectural problem? Or, is there a role for architects to play in society that has value outside of designing a new low-income housing structure?

2. What is the ethnocentric perspective that we are approaching this problem with. Can we step outside of it, and if we did, what would that mean? The following is an excerpt from the NY Times article “Homeless Harvest.”

On either side of the stream in Southern California stood primitive huts that
seemed straight out of prehistoric times, except for their black plastic
sheeting. Nearly camouflaged under the trees and vines, the huts were built from
branches and two-by-fours covered with cardboard and the plastic sheeting that
is used to cover fields to protect young plants from freezing. Essentially crude
wooden frames wrapped with black plastic, they appeared equal parts Cro-Magnon
and Cristo.

and,

The bare wood around the kitchen sink was rotting. The living room had two
beds, while the 10-by-10 end bedroom had three lined up inches apart. Clothes
were slung over twine strung between the walls.

I want to be very clear that I am not interested in romanticizing the conditions of the living that are experienced, but I do want to expose the way that we think about those conditions and how we characterize them, because I believe it says something about the ideal situation. It is not productive to characterize people as primitive for using their ingenuity in the face of scarce resources. We can always assume that everyone should live in a 4,000 sf house? Is this not equally bleak? Is there any social advantage to the unfortunate situation that could be retained in a solution? Is there anything we could learn and incorporate into our own daily lives about conserving resources?

3. If anyone can answer those questions for me, I would be grateful. I do not openly believe there are easy answers, but I do admit I feel it important to at least ask them, to put them out there to ponder and discuss before we approach a solution. Let me attempt to reframe the question more correctly and positively: Can architecture serve to empower its occupants regardless of their current socioeconomic status? Can affordable ownership look to create wealth rather than assuage their poverty situation? Does subsidized housing do anything but slow the rate of financial decay, does it create a positive, improving situation? Can we approach this with incremental housing?

Can we use this concept to break down the barriers of a socially and racially stratified community? Does home ownership encourage ownership of the public sphere/how does shared ownership get incorporated? How do newcomers to a community become legitimized?

Should we spend more time framing the question or developing and solution to it?