guiding questions
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What does the housing ecosystem in Rhode Island look like? How do institutions like non-profits, community development corporations, courts, private sector real estate entities, public housing authorities, city and state committees, etc. interact with one another in order to develop and manage affordable housing?
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What is the best way to organize and visualize this information? How do we make our visualizations most helpful to a variety of stakeholders, including non-profit organizers, legislators and community partners?
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We produced a housing ecosystem booklet, which you can access here, or view our presentation
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We compiled a list of all the active housing organizations in the state, which you can access here
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Housing ecosystem is extensive, with 172 housing organizations; 448 subsidized affordable housing developments; 32 policies and programs
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Many organizations perform several overlapping functions. Are resources potentially spread thin?
findings + products
booklet + graphics
download our booklet
This visualization is an actor map showing how important stakeholders in the housing ecosystem interact with one another. We added the most robust organizations from governmental, non-profit and private agencies. We hope that individuals who want to get a quick snapshot of the housing ecosystem — healthcare professionals, teachers, community partners to name a few — will be able to do so from our actor map.
This map of Cranston shows the location of community action programs, non-profits and affordable housing developments. The purpose of making this graphic was to see how and where housing services and developments are concentrated. Are services scattered in a certain city, or are they centralized in certain parts? Are they close to highways, transportation hubs, or entertainment hotspots?
This visualization shows the many organizations that operate under the Housing Opportunities Initiative, the Housing Policy Coalition and the Homeless Bill of Rights Defense Committee. We created this map partly to show how extensive and integral these three coalitions are to the Rhode Island housing ecosystem.
Our fourth and last visualization shows how affordable housing units are distributed at the state level. We looked at different governmental bodies and programs/policies and how they interacted or influenced one another.
housing resource spreadsheet
click here to access
This spreadsheet includes most of the advocacy organizations, social service providers, lenders, funders, courts, affordable housing developers and deliverers, and programs or policies that influenced affordable housing in the state. We also included all of the CDCs, CAPs, PHAs and affordable housing developments from HousingSearchRI.org’s list updated in April 2018. The spreadsheet (as well as the names listed in this booklet) are meant to serve as a sort of phonebook
potential next steps
In the future, we would like the spreadsheet to be taken up by a specific organization so that they can maintain and thoroughly fact check it. Other next steps include:
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divide up the organizations in the spreadsheet even further into organizations that serve specific identities and communities
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create a front-end website that allows those seeking housing and services to look up specific organizations
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more deeply analyze the contents of the spreadsheet, including evaluating the effectiveness of the system, identifying relationships and patterns and finding overlaps in funding and services provided.
researchers
Ruth Bamuwamye, Urban Studies & Economics '19
Brandon Huang, Urban Studies & Computer Science '19
Cynthia Lu, Public Policy '21
Alicia Mies, Urban Studies '21
community partners
The Helen Hudson Foundation
The Housing Opportunities Initiative
HousingWorks RI
The Rhode Island Coalition for the Homeless (RICH)
Rhode Island Housing
The Rhode Island State Council of Churches