SINCE 1891
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD FRIDAY, APRIL 5, 2019
VOLUME CLIII, ISSUE 44
WWW.BROWNDAILYHERALD.COM
Alum talks Chinese-Italian fashion industry City court enforces lead
code with steep fines Housing court key to ensuring homeowners repair, reduce threat of lead in rental properties By MAIA ROSENFELD SENIOR STAFF WRITER
SOPHIE CULPEPPER / HERALD
Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Santa Cruz Lisa Rofel ’75 delivered the fourth lecture of the East Asian Colloquium series in the Joukowsky Forum Thursday.
Professor Lisa Rofel ’75 uses fashion industry to explore transnational capitalism By SOPHIE CULPEPPER METRO EDITOR
For the modern woman, silk garments are a rarity. “How many of you (women) have
any silk clothing?” A smattering of hands responded. “One … two …three … four … not bad!” At the close of the 20th century, “the increase in women’s employment meant that women no longer had time nor interest to care for silk clothing,” explained Professor Emeritus at University of California, Santa Cruz Lisa Rofel ’75. Male ownership of silk clothing also declined, she noted. Rofel took students and faculty
Providence’s abandoned property problem persists Vacancies increased since 2017, rate of occurrence higher west of I-95, lower east of highway By HENRY DAWSON SENIOR STAFF WRITER
Before 2011, 5,000 square feet of land near Armory Park was abandoned. The owner was not paying property taxes and the plot was lead-ridden. Since 2016, Providence has identified 860 similarly vacant and abandoned properties as of April 1, wrote Kevin Aherne, director of communications for Providence Planning and Development, in an email to The Herald. This number is up from November 2017, when there were 747 vacant and abandoned properties, according to a Community Conversation Presentation by Everyhome, a housing rehabilitation program. The vacant and abandoned properties have been a problem for the city,
INSIDE
primarily since the foreclosure bubble in the late 2000s. “Rhode Island, and Providence in particular, were identified as areas ‘hardest hit’ by the foreclosure crisis at the end of the last decade according to the U.S. Treasury,” Aherne wrote. “The mortgage foreclosure crisis of the late 2000s created an epidemic of vacant and abandoned properties throughout neighborhoods and cities across the United States.” Within the city, the rate of occurrence of vacant and abandoned properties is higher west of the I-95 and lower on the east, which is where College Hill is situated, according to a HeatMap from Everyhome. Differences in poverty, median house prices and the ratio of renters to owners all contribute to the disparity in the number of vacant and abandoned properties throughout Providence, said Sharon Steele, acting president of the Jewelry District Association. The median household income in the East Side of Providence is $64,447, » See VACANCY, page 2
members on a journey through Italian-fashion textile factories in China throughout the last decades of the 20th century as she delivered the fourth lecture of the University’s East Asia Colloquium series to a crowd at the Joukowsky Forum Thursday. Rofel’s talk drew from her latest book, “Fabricating Transnational Capitalism,” co-authored by Stanford Professor Sylvia Yanagisako. The book » See FASHION, page 9
It is well known that lead violations can cost kids their health, but it turns out in Providence, they can also cost property owners a pretty penny. On Thursday morning, Chief Justice of Providence Housing Court William Rampone issued a fine of $44,050 and an additional $50 per day to the owner of a property on Atwells Street for noncompliance with Rhode Island lead legislation. That ruling was just one of 17 cases the judge heard yesterday in Providence’s monthly lead court, which he has presided over for 15 years. “I’ve seen children affected by lead, and it is not a pretty sight,” Rampone said, “but I see tremendous enforcement being performed by the city on lead abatement.” From October 2017 through September 2018, Providence issued 628 Notices of Violation for lack of lead certificates, which resulted in 267 properties becoming lead-compliant, according to information provided by Executive Director of the Childhood Lead Action Project Laura Brion.
Obtaining a lead certificate “is a minimum housing code standard … baked into the basic idea of what it means to have a safe rental property,” said Brion, who works to eliminate lead poisoning through education, parent support and advocacy. Lead is commonly spread through lead paint — which was used on about 80 percent of houses before it was banned in 1978 — and through soil contaminated by lead gasoline, which was outlawed in 1986. Preventing lead poisoning usually involves covering up lead paint, removing or covering contaminated soil and replacing surfaces that grind paint, such as old windows, which Brion calls “little lead dust machines.” But taking these precautions can be costly, and as a result, some landlords neglect them, she added. “Lead poisoning is one of those tricky multifaceted issues that requires a lot of different people to be involved in solving it, and (requires) approaches to changing behavior, breaking down barriers (and) making resources available,” Brion said. In 2016, 5 percent of Rhode Island children under the age of six exhibited elevated blood lead levels, which was down from 6 percent in 2012. Still, as of October 2018, there were 361 active Providence properties without lead certificates. Additionally, some » See LEAD, page 9
U. supports healthcare in Rwanda Warren Alpert program works with Rwandan Ministry of Health to advance emergency care By JANET CHANG SENIOR STAFF WRITER
In a country trying to build one of the world’s best universal healthcare systems, Rwanda has made the University one factor in its strategic plan for healthcare success. Faculty and physicians in Warren Alpert’s Global Emergency Medicine Program are collaborating with the Ministry of Health in Rwanda and ten institutions across the United States to aid in the development of improved emergency medicine education in Rwanda. Now in its second year of operation, the program is designed to train Rwandan general practitioners and nurses in procedures and techniques to address common emergency medical needs in Rwandan hospitals, such as the University Teaching Hospital of Kigali.
COURTESY OF NAZ KARIM
Warren Alpert’s Global Emergency Medicine Program, along with other U.S. institutions, is collaborating with the Ministry of Health in Rwanda. Because the University offers one of the few global emergency medicine programs available in the United States, the program secured funding from the U.S. government and Ministry of Health in Rwanda to implement the training and development curriculum. “We’re very fortunate to (have funding) and approval from the Ministry of Health … (They) have a strategic plan in place to improve the (emergency medicine)
workforce and increase the numbers. In the last 6-7 years, their efforts have been phenomenal,” said Naz Karim, the newly appointed director of the Global Emergency Medicine Fellowship. The training program was not intended to make Rwandan residents continue to rely on U.S. emergency medicine physicians, but instead aimed to develop “a sustainable program run » See RWANDA, page 2
WEATHER
FRIDAY, APRIL 5, 2019
METRO Mayor Elorza requests withdrawal of water monetization bill after community disapproval
COMMENTARY Editorial: UCS has made effective changes to elections code, but still has more work to do
COMMENTARY Allums ’21: The privilege of traveling for spring break is nuanced
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