Citation

Spain D. J. Am. Plan. Assoc. 2001; 67(3): 249-262.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2001, American Planning Association)

DOI

10.1080/01944360108976234

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The faces of the two girls featured in Danuta Rothschild's image Women's Shelter express both despair and hope. Part of a series of works on urban homelessness, the painting depicts them seated on the steps of a shelter for battered women. Such “redemptive places” and the hope they offer to desperate lives are the subject of Daphne Spain's Longer View. Spain recounts the inception of these places in the U.S. early in the last century and describes their latest incarnations in “Charitable Choice” initiatives. Danuta Rothschild emigrated from Poland in 1971 and works daily in her studio in Venice, California. The subject matter of her paintings has included the Holocaust, Native Americans, threats of chemical war in the Middle East, and the natural world. Her work can be viewed on her Web site at and she can be contacted at . A century ago, millions of Europeans, African Americans, and single women in search of work arrived in American cities. Religiously motivated volunteers met these newcomers with settlement houses, vocational schools, and boardinghouses that served as temporary respite from harsh urban conditions. Such “redemptive places” saved cities from demographic chaos by delivering social services to the poor well before the emergence of New Deal programs. Today, the federal government is actively promoting religious solutions to urban poverty. The “Charitable Choice” provision included in the 1996 welfare reform legislation makes faith-based organizations eligible to provide services to the poor. Redemptive places, therefore, are as important now as they were in the past. Planners can facilitate the creation of redemptive places by communicating the details of Charitable Choice to state and local agencies that outsource social services, identifying eligible properties, and reducing legal barriers to their existence.