The American housing system is full of loopholes which have handled folks of shade unfairly. A current online game developed by housing and neighborhood advocates goals to convey the phantasm of alternative within the housing system.
The sport is known as Dot’s House. In Dot’s House, gamers take the position of Dorothea “Dot” Hawkins, a younger black lady dwelling in her grandma’s home. The home is positioned in an uninvested neighborhood in Detroit and is in determined want of repairs. Dot travels again in time utilizing a magical key to make a collection of housing choices that may change the long run. The choices embrace whether or not her grandma ought to spend money on a shabby home as their first residence, whether or not her mother and father ought to transfer away from their neighborhood to the suburbs after their residence is ready for demolition.
Nice piece from @EyeZehUhh on @risehomestories‘ Dots House:
“Serendipitously sufficient for me, Dot’s House offers each validation and perception into how housing inequality manifests for folks of shade within the U.S.”https://t.co/otc0P1vTa7— Alliance for Housing Justice (@aforhj) January 12, 2022
The twist of this recreation is that the end result is at all times bittersweet for a black lady within the American housing system. Gamers journey throughout totally different eras, every highlighting a big second in historical past relating to Black homeownership. These historic moments embrace the Nice Migration of the twentieth century, city renewal efforts within the Nineteen Nineties, and eventually, the 2010 foreclosures disaster that helped spur gentrification. Gamers get to see and expertise racist housing insurance policies and lending practices whose affect spanned throughout a number of generations in actuality.
The housing and land director at PowerSwitch Motion and a co-producer of the sport Christina Rosales acknowledged: “We wished gamers to play the sport and never essentially empathize with Dot’s household however simply to bear witness to, and accompany them by means of, these very intimate however consequential moments.” The sport is free to obtain on Steam and was just lately featured on the Sport Builders of Colour Expo.