One year ago today, I published the first window.
Five Windows into a Fragile Economy started with a simple claim: I have lived on both sides of the systems we call safety nets, and from both sides, the cracks look the same. Inclusion is not charity. It is infrastructure.
Here is what the first four windows found.
Window 1: Housing. A roof and a route are not luxuries. When a voucher ends, a bus doesn’t run, or a paycheck comes late, those failures don’t happen one at a time. They stack. Growth without access isn’t growth. It’s displacement.
Window 2: Community Safety. In all my years as a lifeguard and aquatics leader, I never lost a life on my watch. In a few years of community safety work, I saw dozens lost. The difference was never compassion or courage. It was infrastructure. Prevention is infrastructure.
Window 3: The Nonprofit System. Fragility in the nonprofit sector isn’t a flaw. It’s a funding choice. We underfund HR, finance and technology, then hold leaders responsible when the structure breaks.
Window 4: Technology. The digital divide is no longer about who has a laptop. It is about who can navigate digital life. A signal and a system are not luxuries. They are infrastructure.
Then I stopped.
Window 4 published last December, and the fifth window, Inclusive Economic Growth, did not follow. It wasn’t writer’s block. I wrote the first four windows about things I had already lived through. The fifth I have been writing while living it. Every time I drafted it, the story moved again.
A lot moved this year. I produced Golden Hour Unboxed at the Bellevue Botanical Garden, with 20 vendor and community tables at sunset. I told my story on the Voices of Bellevue stage. I kept serving on the boards and state panels where these systems get decided. And I kept living the other side of it too.
So Window 5 will not be a conclusion. When it comes, it will be a dated position: where things stand on the day I publish it. Then a closing will bring all five windows together in one place.
Until then, I am going back through each window, one a week, starting today with housing. If you are new here, start with the introduction. If you have been here since the beginning, thank you for waiting.
If the system isn’t built for us, then we must build better systems.
Read the series: Introduction · Window 1: Housing · Window 2: Community Safety · Window 3: The Nonprofit System · Window 4: Technology