Map the Gap: Design Research for Eviction Prevention

Diana Nicholas (Drexel University)

Map the Gap, an in-development community-driven digital tool that connects tenants, landlords, and the relevant home repair, healthcare, and legal service providers in Philadelphia, will supply personalized navigation of Philadelphia’s housing system, and build channels of communication between parties involved in eviction. This process will operate through a novel exchange of services with the intention of helping urban dwellers to live healthier lives and to play active, sustainable, and critical roles in mitigating the epidemic of housing insecurity. Our objective to develop an evidence-informed, feedback-receptive mobile health (mHealth) tool is realized through design research data collection, development, and user-testing processes pursued in collaboration with the West Philadelphia community. These ongoing processes yield data on uninhabitable living conditions, uncertainty regarding the capacity to pay rent, and relocations, as well as community housing priorities.

Through multi-model data collection and analysis, shared value is rendered between the academic research team and the West Philadelphia community experiencing the lived reality of housing insecurity. Collaborations are enabled to practically operationalize datasets as informants of the mHealth tool. The overarching goal of the Map the Gap and its development process is to ameliorate the daily and long-term weight of housing insecurity on Philadelphia’s residents and systems, and to promote a culture of health in doing so (Lavizzo-Mourey, 2015). By utilizing design research methodologies to democratize the development of such a tool we cultivate the sustainable, equitable relationships between humans and the built environment which cities require to promote wellness for all.

Lavizzo-Mourey, R. (2012). Why Health, Poverty, and Community Development Are Inseparable. In Nancy O. Andrews & David J. Erickson (Eds.), What Works for America’s Communities: Open Forum: Voices and Opinions from Leaders in Policy, the Field, and Academia (1st ed., p. 11). Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and the Low Income Investment Fund.