I attended a community board meeting in Sunset Park on Wednesday, February 18th. Representatives from the offices of the DA, state senator and state assemblymen attended this meeting as well. There were many issues discussed at this meeting such as truck traffic, illegal parking, housing and education. Since part of Sunset Park is located near the Gowanus Bridge, many found that the truck traffic raises noise and safety issues. Also under the bridge boats and larger vehicles park for long periods of time illegally in the nearby lot. Even though these are important issues housing and education seemed to be discussed a bit more in depth. What I found out was that some families were forced to go to the Bronx shelter assignment office because there’s a lack of housing. This surprised me because there were a few vacant houses in the area which could be utilized. Furthermore, no homeless people were visible during any of the visits to Sunset Park. However, I did also recall how many people were there, especially around the commercial area. The community stressed this as a vital issue because they want to keep families from Sunset Park in Sunset Park. The thought of sending them to a different location, especially a different borough is unpleasant and destroys their sense of unity within the community. As a result, families double up because of the limitation of space and partake in illegal partitioning (dividing one’s house to illegally rent out that space). One solution that was thought about was building a shelter in Sunset Park. However, this plan isn’t official yet, mostly due to the fact that there isn’t much land to use for this purpose. A direct effect of overpopulation in the area is that many children are attending schools with crowded classrooms or not attending at all. At the meeting, they mentioned that plans to build another public school was in effect. Even though the construction of the school was approved, there are still many obstacles to overcome such as location, land and safety. The proposed location happens to be one of the more dangerous avenues in the neighborhood therefore causing more issues to arise. But, this school would be for new grade and middle school students and contain about six hundred seats. Overall, this was a fairly successful meeting since many important crises were discussed. Unfortunately, in the end the board committee said that this meeting would not be considered official because there weren’t enough people attending that day therefore meeting minutes were not approved. This actually shocked me. Even though this was the first public meeting I ever attending, I still thought there was a sufficient amount of people (about eighteen). Nonetheless, I found this meeting to be a useful source. It served as a reliable insight on the community. Even though I visited the neighborhood, I did not realize these issues existed since I was unable to actually go into the school I saw or one’s house. This meeting gave me an in depth perception of how families live there.