1.4 — Exercises
Module 1 — Reading, reflection, and the first manifesto draft.
Reading
These are paired with specific sub-entries. Read them in this order, alongside or after the relevant section.
After 1.1 — The Economics Problem
Primary: Evicted by Matthew Desmond The most accessible entry point to the economics problem. Short, narrative, devastating. Desmond spent years embedded in low-income Milwaukee neighborhoods documenting the eviction process from both tenant and landlord perspectives.
- Read for: The human mechanics of housing instability — what eviction actually does to a life. The landlord profit model: how low-income rental housing is extremely profitable for owners and extractive for tenants. The relationship between housing instability and social isolation (this is the village problem in its negative form).
- Watch for: How many of the cascading harms (job loss, school disruption, health decline, social isolation) are things the CLT-LEHC model would structurally prevent. Also: Desmond’s policy proposals in the epilogue — how do they compare to the CLT approach? Where does he go further, and where does he stop short?
- Connects to: Desmond — Evicted, Poverty By America - Desmond, The Irreducible Minimum
Secondary: The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein Essential for the Durham context. How federal, state, and local policy manufactured racial segregation in housing. Table stakes for any housing presentation in the American South.
- Read for: The specific federal policy mechanisms — FHA redlining, HOLC, VA loans, racially restrictive covenants enforced by courts, public housing siting decisions, highway construction through Black neighborhoods, exclusionary zoning. Durham’s Hayti destruction is a local instance of these national patterns.
- Watch for: The de jure vs. de facto distinction — this changes everything. If segregation was created by law, the remedy must be structural, not voluntary. Also: the wealth gap as a direct consequence of housing policy — Black families systematically excluded from the postwar homeownership boom that built white middle-class wealth. How does the CLT function as a reparative instrument?
- Connects to: Rothstein — The Color of Law, Durham Community Land Trustees
Supplementary: The Best of Enemies by Osha Gray Davidson Durham’s own story. C.P. Ellis (former KKK leader) and Ann Atwater (Black civil rights activist) co-chairing a 1971 school desegregation charrette in Durham.
- Read for: The charrette process — what structural features enabled cooperation across radical difference? Durham’s racial history as it played out in neighborhoods and schools. The difference between programmed reconciliation and structural conditions for cooperation.
- Watch for: Davidson is more honest than the heartwarming film version. The transformation was messy, incomplete, driven by structural circumstance rather than personal virtue. Community across difference doesn’t require everyone to love each other. It requires structures that make cooperation possible and repeated contact that makes it normal. That’s the Relational Accountability model.
- Connects to: Davidson — The Best of Enemies, Relational Accountability, Intentional Community Failure Modes
After 1.2 — The Village Problem
Primary: Palaces for the People by Eric Klinenberg The research case for social infrastructure. The most actionable book on the village problem.
- Read for: What social infrastructure actually is — specific physical spaces and institutions that produce community as a byproduct. The Chicago heat wave study (1995): neighborhoods with strong social infrastructure had dramatically lower death rates than demographically similar neighborhoods without it. The library as paradigmatic social infrastructure — directly relevant to the library economy concept. Evidence on how social infrastructure interacts with income and housing stability.
- Watch for: Which of Klinenberg’s social infrastructure examples are achievable at Wellspring’s 30–50 household scale. What would a “palace for the people” look like at village scale? Does social infrastructure bridge or bond — does it connect people across difference, or primarily within groups?
- Connects to: Klinenberg — Palaces for the People, The Library Economy, The First Step and the Desire Path
Secondary: Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam The canonical text on social capital decline. Foundational but dated — know it to build on it and critique it.
- Read for: The bridging/bonding social capital distinction — Wellspring needs both. Bonding within the community (the village problem), bridging to the surrounding Durham neighborhood (the “face outward” principle). A community that only bonds becomes insular; one that only bridges never coheres. Also: Putnam’s data on the relationship between social capital and health, safety, and economic outcomes — useful evidence for the manifesto.
- Watch for: Whose social capital Putnam is measuring. The bowling leagues and Elks lodges he mourns were often exclusionary by race, gender, and class. The social capital of the 1950s was real but unevenly distributed. Wellspring can’t rebuild that version of community — it needs post-Putnam social infrastructure that produces connection across difference, not within homogeneity.
- Connects to: Putnam — Bowling Alone, Loneliness Epidemic, Intentional Friendship
After 1.3 — The Inseparability Thesis
Primary: Read (or re-read) the vault note The First Step and the Desire Path This is the Worn Path’s own articulation of the inseparability thesis. It was written before the course existed and it’s the philosophical seed everything grows from.
- Read for: The Iroh principle (presence requires having met yourself). The faith problem vs. the legibility problem (people don’t know the Irohs exist). The desire path as design method (build conditions, not outcomes). The commodification critique (pricing the gift destroys the gift).
- Watch for: Where the vault note and the course entry (1.3) say the same thing in different words. Where they diverge. The course entry is the teaching version; the vault note is the thinking version. Both should inform the manifesto.
Reflection Prompts
Work through these after completing the readings. They’re designed to move the concepts from “understood” to “internalized.” Write or think, either works — but if you write, save it. It’ll be useful in Module 6.
On the Economics Problem
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The extraction test. Pick a specific housing situation you know personally — yours, a friend’s, a family member’s. Trace the money: where does the rent or mortgage payment go? Who profits from the arrangement? How much of what the resident pays goes to actual shelter, and how much goes to extraction (landlord profit, investor return, interest, insurance, speculation)?
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The Durham question. What do you already know about Durham’s specific housing history — Hayti, urban renewal, highway construction, gentrification patterns? After reading Rothstein and Davidson, what patterns do you see in Durham’s current neighborhood geography that trace back to these policies?
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The landlord math. After reading Desmond, try to articulate the landlord profit model in low-income housing. Why is “affordable housing is unprofitable” a myth? What does the CLT model do to this equation?
On the Village Problem
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The hardware audit. Think about where you live right now. What social infrastructure exists within walking distance? Where do you encounter neighbors incidentally (not by plan)? If you can’t name any incidental contact points, that’s not a personal failure — it’s a hardware problem.
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The gift inventory. Who are the Irohs in your current neighborhood — the people with skills, knowledge, or care that they’d share if anyone knew to ask? Do you know they exist? If not, what infrastructure would make them visible?
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Bridging and bonding. After reading Putnam, think about Wellspring’s design. What features would build bonding social capital (within the community)? What features would build bridging social capital (to the surrounding Durham neighborhood)? Where might these goals conflict?
On the Inseparability Thesis
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The flywheel. Imagine a Wellspring resident whose carrying costs are 1,800/month. What does she do with the freed $1,200/month — not financially, but with the time and energy that financial pressure was consuming? How does that freed capacity flow into community? And how does that community, in turn, reduce costs for everyone?
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The counter-case. Try to argue against the inseparability thesis. Can you imagine a version of the economics solution that works without the village? A version of the village that works without the economics? What breaks in each case? (If you can make a strong counter-case, that’s useful — it identifies where the thesis is weakest and needs more support.)
Writing Artifact: The Problem Statement
This is the first building block for the manifesto. Draft 500–1,000 words that accomplish three things:
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Name the economics problem without sounding like a policy paper. The reader should feel the weight of it, not just understand the data.
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Name the village problem without sounding like a self-help book. The reader should recognize their own experience in it.
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Make the inseparability argument — show why solving one without the other fails. This is the Worn Path’s distinctive claim and it needs to land.
Voice guidance
- Write in first-person plural (“we”) where it feels natural
- The reader is someone who already senses something is wrong but hasn’t been given the framework to name it
- Analytical but not academic. Passionate but not preachy
- Lead with experience, not data. Data supports; experience convinces
- Don’t solve anything yet. This is the problem statement. The solution comes in later modules
Don’t worry about
- Polish. This is a first draft.
- Completeness. You can’t cover everything.
- Getting it right. Getting it started is the goal. We’ll refine in Module 6.