The Scott And Siew Project: Recent Episodes
Scott Turley and Siew Wong
This podcast is about a project being worked on by Scott Turley and Siew Wong. We both have long careers in the software industry and have worked together for a significant chunk of those years. We both have a desire to use our skills and devote our passions to something outside of work. More than that, we want to make a difference in whatever way we can.
This podcast is our weekly journal of our attempt to do just that.
In this episode, Siew and I discuss our feelings about experiencing the layoffs. How that is related to our feelings about this project and perhaps would could be done to improve the way we all our affected by a difficult economy.
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It's been a whole year of no episodes. We plan on changing that. In this episode we discuss what we've been working on. We spent some time rendering homeless data published from HUD on a map.
We have a blogpost that goes into the technical details.
We have out code available on our github.
CoC Topo Data - Topo data that can be used to render the CoC Map.
US Data Organized by County - For each county, the CoC it belongs to, the homeless population of the CoC and the county population.
The CoC Data - Contains total population of the CoC, the homeless data in a CoC, and the list of counties within the CoC.
Contact Us:
thescottandsiewproject@gmail.com
Twitter:
@thescottandsie1
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Siew and I discuss the need for human connection that perhaps one solution for homelessness is to find ways to integrate across class boundaries. Then I discuss some lessons I learned from reading a book about Meth's role in our current homelessness problem. That book is The Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth.
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In this podcast Siew and I wonder whether there's anything within blockchain and web 3.0 generally that might be helpful in the physical world where homeless people can't find shelter.
We both listened to Tim Ferris's podcast with Chris Dixon and Naval Ravikant as a seed to this discussion.
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We kicked of a debate triggered both by a book Siew read, The Prosperity Paradox and a podcast interview with Jaron Lanier I recently listened to.
Siew counters with Ben Thompson's Aggregation Theory ideas about how to leverage current enabling technology.
It's an interesting debate, one I know we'll return to.
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In this episode we rift off some insights gleaned from Brene Brown and her book, The Gift of Imperfection about the importance of setting boundaries in order to find compassion. Something we need to work out as we hope to make a difference within homelessness.
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Our mutual friend and work colleague, Josh, joins us today to ask about how to deal with serious mental health issues which is a major component of the homeless problem. We cover a ranging number of topics as we deal with mental illness including Utah's housing first initiative, The Book on Ending Homelessness, San Diego's homeless podcast, in particular the episode that talks about how homelessness can be predicted with data, UCLA's research policy lab, and much more...
Great to have our friend Josh on the show.
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In this episode, Siew and I explain why we haven't issued a podcast episode in a very long time and why we haven't accomplished much on our project in a while. We talk about some of the stresses we're both experiencing, how that's affected us and some strategies we've learned a long the way.
We get around to homelessness a little bit at the very end. We haven't given up. We're still here.
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Siew has been doing volunteer work for the homeless for a very long time through his church's homeless ministry but that was interrupted because of Covid. He has recently restarted and that has also restarted his efforts to be a friend to a man whose been attending this ministry for a while. In this episode, Siew describes the challenges and difficulties in extending himself in a way that could be effective.
The city of Chandler recently spotlighted the volunteer work done by the Compass Christian Church.
In the podcast, I referenced a really interesting and poignant article about a cleanup effort happening in Portland that has caused some serious disruptions for many people there. I'm also making a bit of progress on a book describing youth homeless.
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Recognizing it's been a while since Siew and I have met, we covered a number of different topics.
We begin by talking a bit about the 2020 AHAR report.
I reference a recent Ezra Klein podcast that describes Utah's recent drive to deal with homelessness by housing them.
Ultimately, we're struggling with what Noah Smith calls a scarcity mindset, offering three examples of scarcity: housing, elite universities, and access to our country through immigration.
We segue from there to talk about why advice is often bad and how we should think more in terms of coaching and how that relates to homelessness. I mention a podcast, but really she just has a lot of Agness Callard has a lot of great articles everyone should read.
We conclude by comparing a book we're reading called Almost Home about youth homelessness specifically highlighting the stories from kids who have been served by the Covenant House with the movie about older folks forced into living into their vehicles by economic hardship, Nomadland. This great youtube video highlights have one woman makes living in her car work for her. It's a great real-life example.
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In this episode, Siew begins by talking about the possibility of migrating our wordpress site off of wordpress.com and onto alternatives that provide greater flexibility at a cheaper price, perhaps Google Cloud or a friend and listener recommended SiteGround.
Next, we transitioned a brief discussion on the recent report from The 2020 Annual Homeless Assessment Report that shows, no surprise, a significant uptick in homelessness in 2020. Siew speculates on some of the causes. We also reference Biden's stimulus that includes funds to address homelessness, that sound significant when dividing the total amount by the homeless population, but given the amount recently announced that will go to Arizona, reported by the Arizona Republic, seems to be diluted in transition.
We end with a conversation about how to optimize funds by spending it on those people who need it most. I spent some time comparing homeless outreach to college admissions. Should colleges be a gatekeeper or should they be providing resources to kids who need it most. This American Life had an episode recently highlighting the University of Texas at Austin's approach in ensuring a more diverse student body while also providing the support needed so that kids with more humble backgrounds could thrive. Similarly, we need better outreach to find those homeless people most in need of support and then provide the necessary, trained support they need.
We end on a downer.. but that's the way it goes.
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In this episode Siew and I talk about our progress pushing on technology. Siew is ramping up on observable, hoping to get data from HUD into this tool to make the data more visual and giving us the ability to analyze and make broad inferences. I'm trying to ramp deeply into wordpress, using udemy to take some classes.
In the next half of the episode, we get a little deep, discussing our own feelings of vulnerability and how that relates to our desire to try to help out in homelessness. I messed up the book I shared a story from. I meant to talk about Behind the Beautiful Forevers instead I referenced A Thousand Splendid Suns which is also a beautiful book but not the one I meant to discuss. I also referenced the book Empowered as well.
I hope you enjoy this episode. If nothing else I feel better getting all of that off my chest.
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In this episode we talk a tiny bit about Mountains Beyond Mountains - the book talks about a highly innovative and influential doctor who sees his impact by focusing on the individual patient while also caring about global policy.
What does that mean for us? We need to volunteer. We also need to find other ways to contribute. We're both trying to figure out how to work that in our schedules. We are starting by trying to scan the valley and document a survey of resources. This post starts with Tempe.
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In this episode, I interview Mary, someone who happens to be living with my mom, keeping an eye on her and finding relative home stability.
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In this episode Siew and I talk about some brainstorming we did on Miro and our desire to actually do something tangible, laying out a few process principles from the book, Empowered: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Products.
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In this episode, Siew and I dive a bit more into The Book On Ending Homelessness. We ask the provocative question whether charity has the potential of causing more harm, the need for deep competency and professionalism in dealing with homelessness, in particular organizing all aspects of our response to helping people enter stable long-term housing.
Also, we talk a little bit about our latest blogpost, highlighting some of my recent experiences with homelessness in Portland.
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In this episode Siew and I talk about a bit about Portland homelessness, where I happen to be when this recording was made, tiny homes and its role in affordable housing, and finally a bit of an introduction on my reading of the Book on Ending Homeless.
Links discussed in this podcast:
- The Book on Ending Homelessness
- The interview with Iain de Jong, the author of The Book on Ending Homelessness
- Systems Thinking
- Edwards Deming
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In this episode, we play segments from a recorded interview I had with someone we happened to know who has struggled with homelessness. Siew and I conclude with our reactions to her life story.
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In this episode, we dive into some of the homeless data Siew analyzed from the HUD website. We published some of his findings on a recent blog post. We need more data and plan on doing more work to understand what's driving homelessness. We also talked about some programs at work in Tempe right now, like I-HELP, that provide emergency rental assistance and other ways to keep people from becoming homeless. We talked about the upcoming end on the moratorium on rental evictions. Siew's friend who is a landlord contemplates what to do about tenants who haven't paid rent for many months. We thought about what it would take to create our own homeless shelter, to provide rental assistance or if there would be more to helping homelessness than just pure dollars. We do need more data. Finally, I end with a bit of an inspirational message inspired from some thoughts by Blair Braverman on a podcast with Kara Swisher on Sway.
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Siew and I discussed what we accomplished the past week. I had a couple of interesting meetings with a couple of organizations working on homelessness with hopes of getting plugged in. Siew spent the week playing with data. In this episode we wax a little philosophical about some of our initial findings. Can we do what it takes to end homelessness? Can we have skin in the game? I had a nice zoom meeting with a representative from UMOM and another in person meeting at the Tempe First United Methodist Church. Siew has begun to dig into the data he pulled off of the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness which he'll be pulling into a blogpost soon. We discuss how zoning laws might affect homeless, referencing an article by Ezra Klein. I've also started listening to a podcast on homelessness and cite a few stories from there.
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In this episode, Siew and I talk about our recent progress, including our expanding website, a podcast now available on all the major channels, a recent blogpost I wrote and we conclude it with next steps and hope for more.
More specifically...
We now have a website. We discussed some thoughts on our first blogpost on Effective Altruism. Siew recommended an excellent resource on poverty at the site Poverty Unlocked. Siew and I committed to give some money to the Give Well Maximum Impact Fund. We discuss the need to do this work on a flywheel, a concept Jim Collins talks about. Siew recommended a book on homelessness that was turned into a movie, Same Kind of Different Me. And of course we talked a lot about Effective Altruism.
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In this episode, Siew and I introduce Effective Altruism by discussing the book, Doing Good Better.
We reference our barebones website, hosted on Wordpress, thescottandsiewproject.wordpress.com, and whether or not we want to keep it on wordpress.com or find a different hosting site.
We discuss whether or not we want to keep our podcast on anchor.fm or move it elsewhere.
We discuss homelessness a bit by discussing high level solutions described in https://www.usich.gov/solutions/.
Finally, we talk about next steps, including starting conversations with people in the community.
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Why are we doing this podcast at all? What are we hoping to get out of this? We begin the discussion in this episode.
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