October 28, 2020

Local Initiatives Support Coporation (LISC) and the Urban Health Collaborative (UHC) at Drexel University’s Dornsife School of Public Health are partnering with multi-family property owners to develop data indicators demonstrating the connections between COVID-19 and tenant, building owner, and building needs. These include current and projected needs of tenants such as basic daily needs, behavioral health needs, physical health status, job loss due to COVID-19, and the corresponding impact on affordable rental properties.

A generous $40,000 award from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is supporting the initial phase of this work, that began in July 2020. The work will incorporate LISC facilitated listening sessions with multi-family housing partners and stakeholders to affirm housing relief and recovery needs, and to develop new indicators that will support policy and resource development for multi-family housing partners.

This project is being led by Amy Carroll-Scott, PhD, MPH, UHC policy and community engagement core co-lead, and Danny Galpern, MPH, research assistant, West Philly Promise Neighborhood. At the completion of the project, collected data will be incorporated into Drexel's COVID-19 Urban Vulnerability Data Dashboard, including an interactive city map, for data sharing and use among multi-family affordable housing stakeholders.