Public & Collaborative

Public & Collaborative: Designing Services for Housing is a collaboration between the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development, the Public Policy Lab and the DESIS Lab at Parsons. The project explored design recommendations to assist HPD in more effectively communicating its services providing affordable housing to New Yorkers through its housing lottery process. From 2002 to 2014, HPD has helped finance and develop or preserve 165,000 units of affordable housing in New York City. These units are offered to New York City residents through a complex lottery process, in which applicant have to comply with income requirements among others. In November 2013, we released the publication Public & Collaborative: Designing Services for Housing, which outlines the design process and our four proposals: A set of graphic instructions together with three community-based engagement strategies — “hyper-local marketing”, “housing ambassadors”, and “street team” — will be piloted by HPD in  2014.