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A fire so wild : a novel / by Ruiz-Grossman, Sarah,author.;
"With the emotional echoes of Little Fires Everywhere and the lush atmosphere of Disappearing Earth, a riveting debut novel in which a wildfire creeps toward Berkeley, California, igniting tensions as characters from all walks of life confront the injustices growing beneath the city's surface. As a wildfire threatens Berkeley, the city's inhabitants are forced to reckon with the cracks in the lives they've built. Abigail, a wealthy white woman, decides to throw a lavish birthday in a hillside mansion to raise money for the city's newest affordable housing project-and prove to her family that she's made something worthwhile of her life. Sunny, a construction worker who sleeps in a van along the bay's shore, is in the running for an apartment in the complex-but only if enough funds are raised at the party to subsidize low-income rentals. As the heat and smoke from the approaching blaze descend upon the town, tensions rise and residents-young and old, haves and have nots-confront the inequities laid bare, and the fragility of building a life in a world on fire. Alternating among a colorful cast of characters, A Fire So Wild is a timely, tautly paced novel that questions why when everything burns, not everyone is left with scars"--
Subjects: Political fiction.; Psychological fiction.; Novels.; Interpersonal relations; Low-income housing; Wildfires;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Sunbelt blues : the failure of American housing / by Ross, Andrew,1956-author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."Today, a minimum-wage earner can afford a one-bedroom apartment in only 28 out of 3,140 counties in America. The single worst place in the United States to look for affordable housing is Osceola County, Florida. Once the main approach to Disney World, where vacationers found lodging on their way to the Magic Kingdom, the fifteen-mile Route 192 corridor in Osceola has become a site of shocking contrasts. At one end, absentee investors snatch up foreclosed properties to turn into extravagant vacation homes for affluent visitors, destroying affordable housing in the process. At the other, underpaid theme park workers, displaced families, and disabled and elderly people subsisting on government checks are technically homeless, living crammed into dilapidated, roach-infested motels or even in tent camps in the woods. Through visceral, frontline reporting from the motels and encampments dotting central Florida, renowned sociologist Andrew Ross exposes the overlooked housing crisis sweeping America's suburbs and rural areas, where residents suffer ongoing trauma, poverty, and nihilism. As millions of renters face down evictions and foreclosures in the midst of the COVID-19 recession, Andrew Ross reveals how ineffective government planning, property market speculation, and poverty wages have combined to create this catastrophe. Immersive and compassionate, Sunbelt Blues finds in Osceola County a bellwether for the future of homelessness in America"--
Subjects: Housing policy; Housing; Low-income housing; Real estate investment; Working poor;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The killing fields of East New York : the first subprime mortgage scandal, a white-collar crime spree, and the collapse of an American neighborhood / by Horn, Stacy,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."In this groundbreaking work of investigative journalism and true crime, Stacy Horn sheds light on how the subprime mortgage scandal of the 1970s and a long history of white-collar crime slowly devastated East New York, a Brooklyn neighborhood that would come to be known as the Killing Fields. On a warm summer evening in 1991, seventeen-year-old Julia Parker was murdered in the Brooklyn neighborhood of East New York. An area known for an exorbitant level of violence and crime, East New York had come to be known as the Killing Fields. In the six months after Julia Parker's death, 62 more people were murdered in the same area. In the early 1990s, murder rates in the neighborhood climbed to the highest in NYPD history. East New York was dying. But how did this once thriving, diverse, family neighborhood fall into such ruin? The answer can be found two decades earlier. In response to redlining and discriminatory housing practices, the Johnson administration passed the Housing and Urban Development Act in 1968. The Federal Housing Authority aimed to use this piece of legislation to help low-income families of color finally achieve homeownership. But they could never have predicted how banks, lenders, realtors, and corrupt FHA officials themselves would use the newly passed law to make victims of the very people they were trying to help, and the devastation they would leave in their wake. A compulsively readable hybrid of true crimeand investigative journalism, The Killing Fields of East New York reveals how white-collar crime reduced a prospering neighborhood to abandoned buildings and empty lots. Following the dual threads of the hunt for the network of criminals behind the first subprime mortgage scandal and the ensuing downfall of East New York, Stacy Horn weaves a compelling narrative of government failure, a desperate community, and ultimately the largest series of mortgage fraud prosecutions in American history. The Killing Fields of East New York deftly demonstrates how different types of crime are profoundly entangled, and how the crimes committed in nice suits and corner offices are just as destructive as those committed on the street"--
Subjects: True crime stories.; Criminology.; Fraud investigation.; Murder; Scandals.; White collar crime investigation;
Available copies: 0 / Total copies: 1
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Seized by uncertainty : the markets, media, and special interests that shaped Canada's response to COVID-19 / by Quigley, Kevin,1971-author.; Lowe, Kaitlynne,illustrator.; Moore, Sarah(Author of Seized by uncertainty),illustrator.; Wolfe, Brianna,illustrator.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."The COVID-19 virus was responsible for the deaths of over thirty-five thousand Canadians in its first two years alone. Described as the biggest public health crisis of the century, it was an uncertain threat, which emerged within complex psychological, social legal, administrative, and economic contexts. Seized by Uncertainty explains how Canadian governments responded to that threat. Despite early warning signs, the governments failed to appreciate the trade-offs required to respond to the pandemic. Their approach, at times intolerant of debate and blind to diversity, served the interests of some over others. Their response prioritized stability and containment, enabling four in ten people to work from home, disproportionately benefiting an educated middle-class, who benefited further with soaring stock markets and housing prices. Mental health issues spiked, racialized people were much more likely to test positive for the virus, those in low-income sectors experienced unstable employment and lacked workplace safety protection, the lives of low-risk youth were in constant suspension, and residents of some care homes were virtually abandoned. Seized by Uncertainty studies the pandemic response through the contexts in which it emerged, exposing how it revealed uncomfortable truths about a fragmented society and governance problems that predated the threat."--
Subjects: COVID-19 (Disease); COVID-19 Pandemic, 2020-;
Available copies: 0 / Total copies: 1
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The sunset route : freight trains, forgiveness, and freedom on the rails in the American West / by Quinn, Carrot,author.;
"After an abusive, neglected childhood spent on welfare and in and out of homelessness in Alaska, raised by a mother who believed she was the reincarnation of the Virgin Mary, Carrot Quinn moved out on her own. She found a sense of belonging with a bunch of straight-edge anarchists who taught her how to traverse the country by freight trains, sleep in fields under the stars, and find her food by foraging in dumpsters. Her new life was one of thrilling adventure and freedom, but still, the ghosts of her lonely and traumatic childhood continued to haunt her. The Sunset Route is a powerful and brazingly honest adventure memoir set in the unseen corners of the United States--in the unforgiving Alaskan tundra, on trains rattling through forests and deserts, as well as in low-income apartments and crowded punk houses--following a remarkable protagonist who has witnessed more tragedy than she thought she could ever hold and who must learn to heal her own heart. Ultimately, it is a meditation on the natural world as a spiritual anchor, revealing all the ways that forgiveness can set us free"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; Quinn, Carrot.; Alternative lifestyles; Street children;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Storming Caesars Palace. by Gurland, Hazel,film director.; Women Make Movies (Firm),dst; Kanopy (Firm),dst;
Originally produced by Women Make Movies in 2022.Chronicles the extraordinary life of Ruby Duncan, an activist who fights the welfare system and becomes a White House advisor. Ruby, along with Mary Wesley, Alversa Beals, and low-income mothers across the country form the National Welfare Rights Organization to fight for an adequate income, dignity, and justice. Together, they introduce a Guaranteed Income campaign in 1969 which, with feminist Gloria Steinem at their side, becomes part of the Democratic platform in 1972.A real-life superhero, Ruby takes on both the Nevada political establishment and organized crime in a valiant and resolute act of civil disobedience. Based on a groundbreaking book and using lost archival material,STORMING CAESARS PALACE celebrates the visionary leadership of Ruby Duncan, whose courage, tenacity, and dreams could not be quashed against all odds. While the film focuses on a historical story, its message is current and relevant as it asks viewers to consider that a guaranteed universal income is a human rights issue.Mode of access: World Wide Web.
Subjects: Documentary films.; Enthnology.; Social sciences.; Economic development.; Business.; History, Modern.; Human rights.; Sociology.; Documentary films.; Ethnicity.; Current affairs.; History.; Poverty.; African Americans.; Political participation.; United States--History.; Biography.; Equality.; Social justice.; Feminism.; Political activists.;
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Evergreen / by Hirahara, Naomi,1962-author.;
Includes bibliographical references."Los Angeles, 1946: It's been two years since Aki Ito and her family were released from Manzanar detention center and resettled in Chicago with other Japanese Americans. Now the Itos have finally been allowed to return home to California--but nothing is as they left it. The entire Japanese American community is starting from scratch, with thousands of people living in dismal refugee camps while they struggle to find new houses and jobs in over-crowded Los Angeles. Aki is working as a nurse's aide at the Japanese Hospital in Boyle Heights when an elderly Issei man is admitted with suspicious injuries. When she seeks out his son, she is shocked to recognize her husband's best friend, Babe Watanabe. Could Babe be guilty of elder abuse? Only a few days later, Little Tokyo is rocked by a murder at the low-income hotel where the Watanabes have been staying. When the cops start sniffing around Aki's home, she begins to worry that the violence tearing through her community might threaten her family. What secrets have the Watanabes been hiding, and can Aki protect her husband from getting tangled up in their mess?"--
Subjects: Detective and mystery fiction.; Historical fiction.; Novels.; Communities; Japanese Americans; Murder; Secrecy;
Available copies: 0 / Total copies: 1
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Free the land : how we can fight poverty and climate chaos / by Lim, Audrea,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."An eye-opening examination of how treating land as a source of profit has a massive impact on racial inequality and the housing, gentrification, and environmental crises. Climate change, gentrification, racial discrimination, and corporate greed are some of the most urgent problems facing our society. They are traditionally treated as unrelated issues, but they all share a common root: the ownership of land. Environmental journalist Audrea Lim began to notice these connections when she reported on the Native communities leading the fight against oil drilling on their lands in the Canadian tar sands near her hometown of Calgary, but before long, she saw the essential role of land commodification and private ownership everywhere she looked: in foreclosure-racked suburbs and gentrifying cities like New York City; among poor, small farmers struggling to keep their businesses afloat; and in low-income communities attempting to resist mines and industrial development on their lands, only to find that their voices counted less than those of shareholders living thousands of miles away. Free the Land is a captivating and beautifully rendered look at the ways that our relationship to the land is the core cause of the most pressing justice issues in North America. Lim expertly weaves together seemingly disparate themes into a unified theory of social justice, describes how the land ownership system developed over the centuries, and presents original reporting from a wide range of activists and policy makers to illustrate the profound impact it continues to have on our society today. Ultimately, this book offers a message of hope: by approaching these socioeconomic issues holistically, we can begin to imagine just alternatives to fossil-fueled capitalism, new ways to build community, and a more sustainable, equitable world"--
Subjects: Climatic changes.; Land use; Race discrimination.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Investing in fixer-uppers : a complete guide to buying low, fixing smart, adding value, and selling (or renting) high / by DeCima, Jay P.,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index.Nobody wants to buy an ugly, decrepit, rundown house-which is exactly why they provide real estate investors with the best bargains! In 'Investing in Fixer-Uppers', nationally known real estate guru Jay DeCima reveals how investors can add thousands of dollars to the value of an "ugly" house". The bestselling guide for beginner real estate investors is back, and better than ever-with more than 40% new material to help you find-and profit from-new opportunities in today's market. When the first edition of the bestselling 'Investing in Fixer-Uppers' came out in 2003, browsing newspaper classified ads was the best way to search for fixer-uppers. Now, updated to reflect modern realities in the drastically changed property market, 'Investing Fixer-Uppers', Revised Edition gives you the most timely, accessible guide to finding great opportunities-and profiting handsomely-in the today's market. Written with the hands-on, real-life expertise of seasoned investor-educators with more than 250 properties between them, 'Investing in Fixer-Uppers' provides an easy-to-follow roadmap for adding value to a rundown house or apartment and profiting tens of thousands of dollars-without waiting for appreciation. In these pages, you'll learn about the power of seller financing, how to create a million-dollar property, how to specialize in the right kinds of properties, and more.
Subjects: House buying.; Real estate investment.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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