I really enjoyed the speaker we had on Monday because he spoke about his organization on the East Coast and how they are successfully combatting issues of homelessness. What surprised me the most was how much funding the organization receives in order to do what they do. It makes me wonder how much of homelessness could be fixed if there was more funding going towards building affordable housing and helping individuals find jobs that pay a livable wage in California. I think an important and interesting fact that the speaker mentioned was that when they build or remodel their homes, they are focused on creating the appearance of an extremely nice house (and the appearance that only one family lives inside) in order to avoid stigma from the surrounding community. This was interesting to me because I think that this is often the most difficult part of housing homeless individuals. Like we’ve talked about before, most communities have the leaf blower effect, where even if they support housing individuals, they don’t want it in their neighborhood. The unfortunate truth is that in order to have a successful housing development within a certain city, you have to play along with the city’s spoken and unspoken rules. Lastly, I thought that it was interesting that in new jersey, they have one common waitlist that all of the homeless organizations use. I think that this helps eliminate having to re-screen individuals and allows the state to connect the individual with the organization that will best fit their needs. Overall, I thought the speaker was very informative and I was very grateful we had the opportunity to meet with him.