Writing Homework Help

REPORTS should be as long as necessary, but no longer. Grading will be based on content, grammar, and style (i.e., professional appearance/neatness counts). Typically, the report should contain at least 15 double-spaced pages of “real substance.” “Real substance” means your own work/thinking; it does not include regurgitation of case background or tables, graphs, or appendices, or extensive use of quotes/analyses from other sources. However, your report should include all necessary, well-designed, professional quality tables, graphs, and appendices that are needed to successfully support your arguments and convey information to your audience. The reports also should contain a professional quality Executive Summary (because it repeats the key points and recommendations made in the report, the Executive Summary does not count as “real substance”). Appropriate headers and/or footers and page numbering are part of any professional quality report. Follow closely the report format provided in the screenshow on OneDrive.

The Assignment

Today is June 2, 1998, and you are the advisor to Alan Painter, Director of the Community Services Division of the Department of Housing and Human Services; Alan has worked on the design and implementation of services and programs to assist homeless people for over a decade. You are just leaving the press conference in which the Mayor announced his “ZERO HOMELESS FAMILY PLEDGE.” (Neither you nor Alan were aware of the content of the press conference before you heard it “live”!)

You and Painter understand the political power of counting and publicly emphasizing the size of the homeless population in Seattle. Even so, the practice makes both of you uncomfortable. Schell’s pledge raises the stakes and the scrutiny of the homeless street count. You wonder what effect the pledge will have on the supply and demand for shelter space. Even if additional shelter space is developed, you fear that some of the target population still might choose the streets. Furthermore, factors beyond the City’s control have a significant impact on the number of homeless people.

According to the best estimates, of the 1,300 homeless people living on the streets without shelter on a given night, over 700 are homeless families with children or single women in Seattle, the categories described in Schell’s pledge. You wonder what it will take to bring that number down to zero. You also wonder who will be counting and how they will do so.

In this case your Report should propose (to Alan Painter) a detailed (and well justified) “action plan,” that Alan will make to the Mayor, in which you/he will set forth your proposal for fulfilling the Mayor’s pledge. Make sure you address how you will resolve the several competing tensions in the case.

Obviously your Report also will need a timeline and project budget. (You may assume present technology and technology costs. For anything else, assume 1998.) The projected budget must be “realistic” within the parameters set forth in the case – don’t “assume” that any sudden gigantic windfalls will come your way, or that the Mayor will throw open the purse strings to support his pledge (which is not to say you can’t weasel some additional funds out of him).

This is your chance to shine – and to improve the situation for Seattle’s homeless in the near term, and, perhaps, the longer term as well.

HINTS:

A few hints I passed along to folks in prior semesters regarding the “Homeless in Seattle” case. When ambiguous, you = you walking in Alan’s shoes.

1. Make sure you are careful in constructing the problem statement.
2. How much money do you have to spend?
   • Not much. But exactly how much depends on Seattle’s fiscal year.
   • You can re-prioritize some proportion of Alan’s budget (and Alan’s effort), but not all of it. And much of what Alan/you are presently doing in your shop already is addressing the problem. But, see bullet above, do you have a full year’s budget to re-prioritize, or is a portion of it already spent.
3. Can you only spend “your” money?
   • Your recommendation is to the Mayor. Thus, you can suggest he spend some of the money under his control. While he has more money, many of the same constraints above apply. Can he lay off all the police and firefighters to address his Homeless Pledge?
4. What about the grant?
   • Who was the grant awarded to?
5. What about the multi-year bond money?
   • What was the specific purpose of the bond?
   • Can the bond money help you without putting you behind bars? (You don’t want to go to jail do you?)
6. I didn’t say there was no money from these sources, but make sure you can justify what you want to use.
7. As Alan Painter, you care about the “long term” solution to the homeless issue. But that is not the problem right now.
   • You would, however, like to do minimal harm to current efforts at long term solutions.
8. I said you didn’t have much money, but perhaps you have “resources”?
   • Perhaps the Mayor has resources?
9. Who are your friends in this battle? Your enemies?
   • How willing will the King County Exec and Council be to help Seattle’s Mayor?
10. Think about what you know about the homeless from your knowledge and experience. Think about what you know about City/County/State politics from your experience