I wanted to go into more detail about a typical day of recruiting in the neighborhoods. The past few days my partner and I were recruiting in RV Taylor homes. These are public housing facilities. They are small, cheaply made, and provide a sense that a family isn't suppose to get comfortable and feel at home in them. They're supposed to live there until they can move out to a better living arrangement. But, that's not always the result-- forcing families to live in these poorly built housing facilities.
So we are given tracking sheets with past participants and we go door to door via the tracking sheet information to try and find the children to sign them up to take the survey.
We knock on the first door. No one answers so we start preparing a door hanger with information about the study. Then a young boy about 12 answers the door and we definitely woke him up. We get out to the neighborhoods pretty early, so waking up the kids who are sleeping in because it's summer is pretty common. We get the child signed up and move on to the next address.
The next door we knock on houses a family not on the tracking sheet. This is very common, especially in the public housing developments. Families move in and out very often. We ask for any children ages 10-18 and see if they're interested in getting signed up for the survey. Luckily this boy has taken the survey in the past so he's already in our records. The mother is holding back 3 kids who are pretty eagerly trying to get out on the porch to visit us. The older one--who we are signing up is successful and expresses how excited he is for the survey. He asks if it's in the same spot as last year and if he still gets $15. He sweetly asks us to write down 10:55am instead of 11am so he's on time. Then he let's his younger brother speak. The younger boy makes little sense. I attributed it to excitement, but his mother explained that he rarely talks and doesn't make much sense. He has a learning disability and I'm pretty certain he was blind.
We move onto the next house. This grandmother invites us in, fixes up the couch for us, and screams for all of her grandchildren to come into the room. One grand-daughter, probably in her early twenties is bottle-feeding a 3-month old baby. She was precious. Unfortunately the mother was too old to take the survey, so we moved on to asking about the children on our tracking sheet. We get them signed up. We visit with the grandmother until we decided it's time for us to head out.
The next house looks vacant. But from prior experience, just because something looks vacant doesn't always mean that it is. In one instance, my partner and I swore a house was vacant and a family of 9 answered the door. But, this house was definitely vacant. We could see in the window. The appliances were ripped out from the wall and taken-- all expect a thawed out refrigerator. This is the worst smell in the world. This smell mixed with piled garbage gives a scent of rotting carcass. The windows weren't boarded up, so this house must have been recently moved out of. The back door was wide open and we could see the thawed out refrigerator and garbage... this shot down my partner's assumption that a murder occurred here and a dead body must be rotting inside.
We find 2-3 more houses like this in our tracking sheets. Sometimes it's easy to identify houses that are vacant--they're boarded up. But other clues help us to determine the living situation in the household. Can you feel the air conditioning escaping out of the door? Is there recent mail on the porch? Can you hear music/the TV on in the house? Are you able to see in the windows? Can you ask a neighbor? One interesting fact that my partner and I have noticed is that many houses have ADT/Brinks security stickers everywhere. I doubt these homes have these services, but it's definitely used to avoid robberies by the tenants.
We move on and knock on a house where the door is broken. We hear people yelling at us to use the back door, so we do. We're asked to come in by a young mother, probably in her thirties. We have 7 kids on the tracking sheet. We ask if they still live here and if they want to do the survey this year. As a 2 year old is pulling on my leg and a scrawny cat is rubbing up against my partner were told that this child died and this teen is in jail, but the others want to do the survey and she has some others to sign up. The house is a mess and there's graffiti on the walls. The lights aren't on-- and may not be working-- and I can see about 10 people sitting in the living room.
As we approach another house there are 5 old men sitting outside drinking beer out of cans in brown bags. It's 10am. We asked them about the children on our tracking sheets. They men are nice, but due to their drunken state aren't much help. With leave them with information and move on.
We have another address, which is further out so we start our walk. We get stopped by a mother in a minivan with 6 children in the back. She asks if we're with the survey and if we can sign up her daughter. We ask her where she lives and we follow her to her driveway. She hurries into the house with her kids and the young men all wearing red (probably members of the blood) at the neighboring house explains why. We head in after her, get her daughter signed up, and then leave. We're stopped by the men outside and asked if they can be signed up for the survey. We tell them that we're looking for younger kids like 10-12 and they joke with us for a bit with that being their age. They aren't very threatening and we leave the neighborhood and head back to the office for lunch.
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