Field guides · Urban Residential Holdouts · L8.1
L8.1

Urban Residential Block Holdouts

The poorest of the thirty groups, in southern cities, where more than half of neighborhoods carry a heavy load of chronic illness.

Free · Yours to print · Seven field notes follow over two weeks
Urban Residential Holdouts · One of 2
In this guide
IDo now
IIWho lives here
IIIWhere it is cracking
IVWhat to say
VA story to share
VIFor you
IIWho lives here

Read on the street, not on a spreadsheet.

Setting

Older detached houses on residential streets. Living alone is the commonest arrangement here, at two households in every five.

Work

Office work, sales and food service lead, then production, warehouse work, cleaning and health support. About one adult in six holds a degree.

What they are hungry for

Somebody who does not flinch at a health conversation or answer it with a diet tip.

A neighbor you might meetInvented, so no one is a case study
Keisha

Thirty-eight, renting the frame house on the corner with three children, working split shifts at a store eleven miles out. Four years on this block, and she still gets called the new family.

IIIWhere it is crackingSigns, not proof of anything

You cannot know the reason from the sidewalk.

Bodies

Diabetes near one in five, and poor health near one in five. Over half these blocks carry heavy illness. Nothing else here breaks as deeply, and the break is physical.

Houses that outlived the money

Owned outright, hard to insure, and falling apart. There is no product for this, and everybody knows it, which is why nobody raises it.

The empty house

Two in five households are one person. When that person is old and sick, the gap between doing all right and being in trouble can close in one night.

The rest of
the guide

What to do this week, what to say, and why the news is good on this particular street.

The full guide carries the four first actions, three real conversation scenarios with the notes underneath each line, a story worth telling here, and the Gospel written into what this street is actually carrying. It is free, and it opens in the browser.

Where to next