Do you ever get angry or frustrated by a problem in your hometown that no one seems to do anything about? Maybe it’s hyperlocal, like a street crossing that feels particularly dangerous for pedestrians, or a nearby stream that is strewn with litter. Or maybe it feels like a larger issue, such as a threat to public safety in your neighborhood, or a lack of places where teenagers can hang out after school.
We want to know: What’s the problem you identified? And, what’s your proposed fix?
In “New York Lacked an Affordable Housing Portal. So These Teenagers Made One.,” Dan Levin writes about how two high school students have managed to address New York’s problem of affordable housing in a way the grown-ups who run the city have never managed to do:
When Beckett Zahedi was in the fifth grade, he’d accompany his recently divorced father and younger sister on a grueling New York City ritual: the hunt for an affordable apartment. On weekends, they’d trudge through fruitless viewings in Brooklyn, jostling through crowds and sidestepping cockroaches until the elder Zahedi finally found a place to rent.
“I wanted to make sure that they felt comfortable in the place, and it’s hard to find something, so he had this experience over and over of being rejected,” Caveh Zahedi said of his son.
As he got older, Beckett leaned into his entrepreneurial spirit and tech savvy, designing a website where he could sell toys, and hawking T-shirts online. But he never forgot how trying those apartment hunts had been, both emotionally and financially. So last year, as his economics class at the Brooklyn Friends School studied the national housing crisis, he and a classmate hatched an idea for an online housing platform that could help people find homes they could afford.
First, he taught himself to code. “I basically spent the first two months of summer in my room, learning from YouTube and A.I.,” said Beckett, 17. “Those are my teachers.”
In July, after countless bleary-eyed hours on bedroom computers, he and Derrick Webster Jr., his classmate, launched Realer Estate, a website that combines public data with real estate listings, allowing users to search for below-market and rent-stabilized apartments — something the grown-ups who run New York City have never managed to do.
“This is basically the tool that my family needed,” said Beckett, a lanky high school senior with a mop of wavy hair and perhaps the quintessential marker of modern youthful ambition, a LinkedIn profile. “We’d just see, like, one good apartment a month that we can afford. I thought it might be faster, instead of wasting more years, to just create an algorithm that would do that for me.”
The site has already attracted more than 27,000 visitors, along with adoration from local officials, including Adrienne Adams, the New York City Council speaker. During a Council meeting in October, Ms. Adams said she was “so impressed with Beckett and his commitment to helping fellow New Yorkers secure affordable housing.”
Students, read the entire article and then tell us:
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Does Derrick and Beckett’s story inspire you in any way? If so, how? What can we learn from it?
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What’s a problem or issue in your hometown that makes you mad?
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These two teenagers created a website to help New Yorkers find affordable apartments. What solution do you suggest to address the problem you identified?
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Who might you ask for help and what resources might you use to make your proposal a reality?
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What are possible challenges you might face in trying to carry out your idea? How might you address them?
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In general, what qualities or skills do teenagers offer that might be especially useful in tackling local problems?
Students 13 and older in the United States and Britain, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public and may appear in print.
Find more Student Opinion questions here. Teachers, check out this guide to learn how you can incorporate these prompts into your classroom.
Michael Gonchar is the editor of The Times’s Learning Network. He spent 16 years in New York City public schools as a teacher, instructional coach and curriculum specialist.
The post What Problem in Your Community Would You Want to Address? appeared first on New York Times.
