Housing in Racine: help us fund our year-long journalism project

This fall Racine County Eye will launch a year-long series of stories around housing in Racine. Our focus will be on evictions, homelessness, rents, homeownership, and new construction. We also plan on working with the art community on this project to provide a multi-media experience.

Why does this series matter? The Racine Unified School District has an entire department dedicated to helping children living in transient situations. Housing is integral to the strength of economic stability in Racine.

That means they deal with kids that are:

• Staying in a shelter or transitional living program
• Sharing the housing of others due to economic hardship or loss of housing
• In a hotel or motel
• Living in a car, park, campground or other inadequate accommodation
• Living without a parent or legal guardian

Employers struggle to keep workers dealing with evictions. Also when rent prices skyrocket, it impacts the stability of that family. Choices need to be made on whether to pay for gas, food, rent or medications. Less descretionary cash gets spent. And that directly impacts the mental health of those families.

How this project will be different

We’ll be partnering with the art community in Racine to launch our unlocking Racine multi-media art show. Racine County Eye is also partnering with TMJ4 News to tell this story in a compelling and meaningful way that also incorporates solutions-based journalism where the stories aren’t just focused on the problems, but also in how the community has responded to those problems.

The art show and multi-media story telling project includes community engagement, collecting data and stories around housing, and hosting community events to connect people with housing resources.

The art show will feature 10 doors that will open up to display the art piece as the person listens to the audio file from the story. Windows will be placed near the doors that highlight challenges and opportunities, and a string of lights with keys attached to them will highlight solutions.

As we explore different topics around housing, we’ll place one of the doors at at business or public space in the community to bring awareness of the series and educate the community around the topic of housing instability. We’ll also highlight the work being done to help solve it and seek to understand what some of the barriers are that exist.

In short, this is a stortelling project that will highlight impacted people, what the root causes are, and what solutions are possible.

But we need your help to accomplish this work.

Funding our project on housing in Racine

This month our goal is to raise $120,000 to help fund our journalism projects. If this work is important to you, please become a paid subscriber today.

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