User:Kangaboo/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?

Outreach and Homelessness in the San Francisco Bay Area

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?

(Briefly explain why you chose it, why it matters, and what your preliminary impression of it was.)

I chose this article because it is relevant to the work I do for my Practice Experience with Suitcase Clinic. It matters because it provides an overview of various definitions, categories, and aspects of outreach, especially in the context of homeless street outreach, which is an essential part of Suitcase and the primary purpose of many organizations. My initial impression is that it needs a lot of work and has several sections that can be improved as well as sections that need to be added, such as the history and politics of outreach.

I chose the second article because it provides an area overview of the main issue at play: homelessness in the SF Bay Area. It is already an extensive review of the history, policies, and implications of homelessness for each city/region in the Bay Area and critically analyzes the emergence of homelessness as well as current efforts to address the issue.

Evaluate the article

(Compose a detailed evaluation of the article here, considering each of the key aspects listed above. Consider the guiding questions, and check out the examples of what a useful Wikipedia article evaluation looks like.)

The lead section is good and provides an accurate definition of outreach in the first sentence. It contextualizes outreach's purpose and methods, contrasts outreach with traditional service providers, and explains the reasons for its existence. It does not concretely go over the major sections of the article and has some information that is not expanded on or mentioned further in the article. The lead is concise.

The article only covers outreach in the context of homeless street outreach but provides a nice description of how different organizations are oriented to providing housing, basic needs, and/or social services. The content is up to date, with citations from 2018 and work done as recently as May 2021. The various categories of outreach do not fit with the rest of the article which never again mentions the distinctions of different types of outreach. This article does concern populations of underserved and underrepresented peoples and does not consider the cultural competency ramifications of dealing with underrepresented groups on outreach. For example, many outreach groups do not affiliate with law enforcement due to concerns of mistrust when meeting individuals who may have criminal records, mental health concerns, immigration concerns, and belong to racial minorities that have historically been marginalized. Some content, such as the debate over the purpose of outreach in the literature and the history of outreach, is not included in the article.

The article is mostly neutral and provides explanations of both side's views on controversial topics, such as when discussing the Housing First model. Homeless outreach perspectives are overrepresented and talked about most, but this perspective is the most relevant and well studied.

The citations work and support the claims of the article. There is a diverse array of authors who have mostly published peer reviewed articles that are neutral and reputable sources. Facts and beliefs on outreach are properly attributed to those who said them.

The talk page discusses how the outreach article needs to expand to include Christian outreach ministry and link to other related pages on Wikimedia. Past UC Berkeley GPP students discuss their proposed modifications to the article. The article is rated start-class and mid-importance. Wikipedia has less discussion and is more a recording of people's own thoughts on improving the article.

Homelessness in the San Francisco Bay Area

The lead section is well organized with an introduction to the context of the area's development of a homelessness crisis. It goes over the strong economic growth and housing restrictions that have led to the dearth in housing and extremely high property values and rents. It covers basic information on rising poverty levels and extreme disparities in minimum wage earnings and cost of living. It is concise and goes over issues that will be expanded further later in the article.

The content is up to date with relevant citations. This article does concern populations of underserved and underrepresented peoples and does consider historical racialized policies such as exclusionary zoning, gentrification, and redlining that contributed to homelessness. The organization and flow is clear, going from history to causes to efforts to address homelessness. I see room for improvement in the main section of homelessness in Berkeley, efforts to address it in Alameda County, and anti-homeless ordinances in Berkeley.

The article's tone is mostly neutral considering the discourse of policies like redlining and purchasing homeless people one way bus tickets. Despite the damage caused to communities of color and systemic racism employed in such practices, the article focuses on impacts and facts rather than becoming politically opinionated. The prevalence by city section cites many numbers and changes in data regarding homeless residents, letting the data speak for itself regarding the inadequacy of housing and scale of government dysfunction in responding to unhoused people.

The citations work and complement the history and policy discussion of homelessness. The article uses quotes frequently to explain the views of officials and experts who are heavily involved in homeless advocacy efforts. There is a very large list of references from which the article synthesizes information.

The talk page only contains an invitation to an edit-a-thon in 2020. There is no discussion on ways to improve the article.