The affordable housing crisis in Austin : how we got here, what it means, and what we need to do

Affordable housing availability and cost-burden rates for low-income and middle-income households in Austin, Texas are worse than both the national and state averages. As population growth has outpaced housing development, the subsequent rise in property value has created higher housing costs that impede the ability for households to accrue social safety net savings and meet basic needs such as food, shelter, and medical care. This report aimed to examine the history of public and private policy that impacted non-white residents’ ability to accrue wealth and achieve homeownership. In addition, this report examined current affordable housing within the city and its geospatial location in relation to coexisting social service need data within Austin zip codes. The findings of this report show that affordable housing development has primarily occurred in historically African American neighborhoods East of Highway I35. Furthermore, analysis of United Way 2-1-1 caller data of unmet social serviced need indicates high levels of unmet service need existing within these areas. In light of these findings, recommendations to improve affordable housing include: expansion of Pay-for–Success financing for creating Permanent Supportive Housing; push for legislation to create redevelopment zones as well as tax abatements for low-income home owners; funding towards the affordable housing strike fund; and expansion of wraparound services amongst affordable housing providers.Public AffairsSocial Wor

Can women "sound gay"?: A sociophonetic study of /s/ and pitch of gay and straight British-English speaking women

This thesis presents a third wave variationist project, influenced by queer linguistics, that considers the idea of a “gay voice” for female English speakers in Yorkshire, England. This work demonstrates the complexity of identity and why it is important that researchers look past macro-social categories alone, and consider the nuance of local communities. Two studies were conducted to investigate the relationship between women’s sexual orientation and speech: a production study and a perception study. The production study analysed data from 22 participants, from Yorkshire, who identified as female, white, between the ages of 21 and 46, and 12 identified as gay and 10 as straight. It was found that while there were some significant differences between gay and straight speakers based on F0 and /s/ centre of gravity measurements, there were more substantial differences between participants that were both gay and part of a local football team than participants that were either straight or not on the team. The second study on the perception of a “gay voice” for women asked participants to rate qualities such as “homosexual” and “feminine” in order to understand how stimuli with digitally altered F0 would be perceived. Data reveals that sentences with a lowered F0 were perceived as sounding more “homosexual” than stimuli with a raised F0, indicating that a lower F0 may be associated with a “gay voice” for women. However, the nuance of the participants had a significant impact on how they rated these characteristics. This in-depth analysis of how speakers may perform their sexual orientation and how listeners may perceive sexual orientation demonstrates the complexity of language and identity. It was found that local communities are significant in presenting a specific gay identity and how important it is to look at the intersection of many factors to fully understand linguistic variation

The Counterfactual History Novel in Nineteenth-Century British Literature

Although scholarship has long since established the history novel’s general course, few critical readings of the history novel address the innovative means through which writers could manipulate the use of history within these novels. Nor, for that matter, have many scholars considered the relationship between the slow decline of this form of literature as a consequence of the combined effect of the rise of historical studies as a serious academic discipline during the 1830s, and the growing trend for the realist novel throughout the following decades. My dissertation explores how Britons’ fascination with history not only shaped the progress of the history novel throughout the nineteenth century, but also directly influenced a specific type of narrative within this developing subgenre: the counterfactual history novel. As the precursor to the alternative history novel, the counterfactual history novel asks readers to consider plausible alternative outcomes to a historical event but goes no further than requesting that act of contemplation

Spatial Analysis and Archaeological Resources in the FingerLakes National Forest

The objective of this article is to\u27 test how some of the more sophisticated analytical capabilities of GIS can be applied to the data set of the Hector Backbone site in the Finger Lakes National Forest. In doing so it demonstrates how GIS can be used to model the spatial characteristics of the data compiled from the site

Signal Processing

Contains reports on one research project.Clarence J. LeBel Fun

Chronic Clozapine Treatment Impairs Functional Activation of Metabotropic Glutamate Receptor 2 via an HDAC2-depedent Mechanism

Schizophrenia is a chronic mental disorder affecting millions worldwide. It has no known cure. Current pharmaceutical treatments have shown efficacy in only one of the three symptom clusters of schizophrenia, providing little or no benefit in the other two. Furthermore, the current standard-of-care drugs, known as atypical antipsychotics, carry risks of severe side effects affecting multiple body systems. Most patients opt to discontinue drug therapy within two years of initiation due to lack of efficacy and/or preponderance of adverse effects. Previous findings have shown that chronic usage of atypical antipsychotics causes a 5-HT2A-dependent upregulation of histone deacetylase 2 (HDAC2), which in turn leads to downregulation of metabotropic glutamate receptor 2 (mGluR2), a G protein-coupled receptor with an important role in synaptic plasticity. The present study aims to characterize the extent to which this downregulation leads to specific functional outcomes, and in doing so, may help identify new targets for more effective treatment of schizophrenia