OUR PROCESS

The health of the local community begins with housing.  Stable housing and community are necessary for a healthy life. We invite the industry’s best architects, general contractors, financial partners, non-profit organizations, and local communities to the table, and we explore the possibilities. Our background in community building and multifamily housing development viewed through the lens of opportunity positions us to provide a unique yet elemental component of the housing development needs facing our country today.

WE START BY LISTENING
A series of participatory community workshop charrettes brings residents and community leaders together to discuss what is working within their communities and what needs improvement. A charrette is an intensive planning session where citizens, designers and others collaborate on a vision for development. It provides a forum for ideas and offers the unique advantage of giving immediate feedback…it allows everyone who participates to be a mutual author of the plan. At each charrette, residents outline aspects of their communities that require action to build resilience.

BUILDING RESILIENCE
Through in-depth assessment, communities
identify local assets and resources that can be developed and then utilized to reduce vulnerability. Resilience evolves from people working cooperatively to make positive changes in their lives and in their communities. Becoming resilient does not mean going it alone, however. Although increasing self-sufficiency is a core aspect of resilient communities, cultivating resilience requires the collective effort of individuals, communities, public agencies and local government.  

SELF ASSESSMENT - DESCRIBING YOUR COMMUNITY
Creating a resilient community begins by considering who your community is and which communities you belong to. We commonly think of community as a diverse group of people that have something in common such as living in the same place, sharing similar interests or attending the same place of worship. Virtual communities form similarly to interest-based communities but use the Internet and social media as the medium for building community. Senior virtual villages are examples of this type of community. Often people belong to several communities that may overlap: identifying those connections is helpful for future network building.

MAPPING COMMUNITY ASSETS
Making an inventory of existing resources allows people to realize all that the community already has rather than focusing on what is missing. By understanding what is available, community members learn what can be built upon and utilized in future actions. Further, mapping your community’s assets helps people recognize the full variety of resources right at their doorstep. These include individual knowledge and skills, neighborhood associations and local institutions, and infrastructure such as parks, schools and libraries. An accessible and continuously evolving database of assets is a valuable tool for community members to utilize as they work on resilience building.

COMMUNITY ENVISIONING
Envisioning the future brings residents together in imagining what is possible within their community. By discussing what they value, what they wish to see and what they wish to change, community members craft a vision of what their community will be like in ten or twenty years. This vision becomes the blueprint for change, guiding future decisions and actions. It is not immutable – the community may decide to update it periodically – but it does provide a touchstone for determining if the community is on-track and moving in the right direction. For a community vision to be meaningful and useful it must be representative of the entire community. Diversity and inclusiveness matters, as does reaching a consensus: not everyone will agree 100 percent with the vision but if views from the entire community were considered then the vision will have legitimacy.

SETTING GOALS 
​Setting goals that support the long-term vision for the community and that can be realistically achieved is a critical step in building resilience. Goals that are too lofty, requiring resources that are unobtainable, will frustrate residents and may result in people abandoning projects. Similarly, goals that focus only on short-term projects - without contributing to the future vision of the community - tend not to be effective in developing long-term resilience. Therefore, establishing goals that meet certain parameters is essential. Specifically, goals that address priorities, build on existing assets and resources, and can be achieved within a reasonable timeframe work best. Not surprisingly, people like to see results, to know that their efforts are paying off and contributing to the well-being of their community.

DEVELOPING AN ACTION PLAN
Realizing goals and objectives requires identifying and implementing actions that move the community toward its vision, reinforce its stated mission and in the process increase resilience. An action plan functions as a roadmap for how goals will be achieved, detailing who, what, how and when. For an action plan to be effective, community members need to guide its development: it is important for all participants to understand what is involved and what is expected of them. People are more likely to be personally invested in plans they help formulate than in plans assigned to them, increasing the likelihood of success. Further, when everyone is engaged in the process they build relationships through a shared language and intention enhancing community connectedness.