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VCU BATEMAN SUBMISSION 1

VCU BATEMAN SUBMISSION 1

Introduction Affordable housing affects just about everyone, and unfortunately, not many people really know what affordable housing means. In partnering with the Home Matters and the Virginia Housing Coalition, we set out to tackle this issue by creating awareness across Virginia college campuses. Our team discovered that many people across our campus, as well as other areas of the city of Richmond, Va., did not actually know what affordable housing meant. For this reason, we decided that our main focus should be raising awareness about what affordable housing is and how it affects us as college students, as well as recent graduates newly entering the workforce as young professionals. About Home Matters Home Matters seeks to make quality affordable housing available for all Americans. Their main objectives are raising funds and awareness to make the “New American Dream” a reality. This is carried out by partnering with various organizations around the country, where each plays an integral role in fulfilling their mission. About Virginia Housing Coalition The VHC is focused on influencing public policy to put affordable housing projects on the map. Their efforts alternate between focusing on awareness building as a form of promotion and making public policy associated with affordable housing and raising awareness.

Research Phase Our team used primary as well as secondary research in order to fully understand the issue of affordable housing and various stakeholders. We began with secondary research in order to not only find the actual definition of what affordable housing is, but also to identify and find key information and statistics about target audiences. Primary Research Our primary research consisted of conducting qualitative intercept interviews with random pedestrians in two different public locations: the Carytown business district in the City of Richmond, Va., as well as the Student Commons at Virginia Commonwealth University. (Refer to DVD for video footage of the interviews) First Set of Interviews The purpose of conducting sets of interviews in Carytown was to gain insight into the views and awareness of general Richmond-area residents regarding affordable housing. Carytown is a popular destination for residents of Richmond and the surrounding counties with high pedestrian traffic.

VCU BATEMAN SUBMISSION !

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In the first set of interviews in Carytown, participants were asked three open-ended questions:

1. How would you define affordable housing?

2. Do you think affordable housing can be good for the economy? Why/how?

3. How would affordable housing in your neighborhood affect you?

Many respondents seemed confused or uninformed about what affordable housing actually is. Therefore, the answers to the other questions asked were skewed for many of the participants because of those misperceptions. In addition, many participants confused affordable housing with public housing, or thought they were the same thing. The consistency in the confusion of the definition of affordable housing led not only to further investigation of people’s perceptions, but also created the basis of our communication plan. Most people interviewed believed that increasing affordable housing would have a positive impact on the community and the economy, even though most did not know exactly how this would happen. What we found to be interesting, however, was attitudes toward affordable housing being developed in someone’s own neighborhood. Though none of the participants personally had a bias against affordable housing being placed in their neighborhood, most felt that a stigma could be associated with people who needed affordable housing. Another interesting finding was the fact that two participants who stated they were homeless were more informed and aware of affordable housing. This finding further showed us the importance of spreading the message to the general public about affordable housing. Unfortunately, reaching the general public broadly proved difficult to achieve so college-aged adults in Richmond was ultimately selected as a key audience, as we felt that educating this particular audience also would have a more lasting impact. Second Set of Interviews The second set of intercept interviews took place in the Student Commons at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU). The purpose of conducting these interviews with random pedestrians in the Student Commons was to understand representative options of college-aged adults. The Student Commons is a public space on VCU’s campus with a high degree of foot traffic. The following questions were asked of members of this particular audience:

1. How would you define affordable housing?

2. Do you think your current housing budget is affordable based on your budget? Why?

3. What is your general perception of other college students’ housing situation?

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The answers to these questions, similar to those interviewed in Carytown, portrayed a lack of awareness and knowledge related to the subject of affordable housing among some of the students. Half of the students interviewed thought that housing is affordable to students and half of the students did not think that housing is affordable for students. This split in beliefs stem from students not understanding the technical criteria of what makes housing affordable. This finding revealed to us how important it was to educate students of the Richmond area of what makes housing affordable and helped us with the construction of our message to our audience. Secondary Research Our team also conducted secondary research to learn more about our audience of Virginia students. Through this research, we were able to discover: (1) the unemployment rate of college graduates; (2) statistics on the homelessness rate of college students; (3) the rate of part-time student workers; (4) the average salary of college graduates; (5) and the overall affordable housing situation in Virginia as a whole. All findings came from government organizations and reputable news sources. The most impactful information that informed our campaign included the following: National Statistics

• 58,000 college students in the US are considered homeless • 41 percent of full-time college students were employed in 2012

o 18 percent of full-time college students worked 20 to 34 hours per week o 15 percent of full-time college students worked less than 20 hours per

week • 72 percent of part-time college students were employed in 2012

o 32 percent of the part-time students worked 35 or more hours per week o 29 percent worked 20 to 34 hours per week

Local/Virginia Statistics

• Nearly 50% of Richmond households pay more than 30% of their income for their housing. (30% of income is considered “affordable”)

• 22% of Richmond households pay more than 50% of their income for housing. o Many of those households earn less than 30% of the area median income

(equates to less than $20,000 per year in the Richmond area) • More than 3,000 Richmond residents on Richmond Redevelopment Housing

Authority’s waiting list for affordable housing Our team used this information to also create content to reach out to college students of Virginia to portray the housing situation in our area and to let them know how affordable housing is relevant to them as college students. Target Audiences To generate awareness and support among Virginia college students, our target audience focused on students and Virginia residents between 18-24 years of age. We also targeted young professionals between the ages of 23-30.


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Key Messages Our key messages focused on educating students of Virginia college campuses on what affordable housing is, and current statistics about the status of affordable housing in Virginia. Thus, our key messages were as follows:

1. Housing is affordable when there is money left over in your budget for other basic necessities.

2. Approximately 13% of adult children between 18 and 29 move back in with their parents after an attempt to live alone.

3. The median gross rent in VA per year $13,392. 4. Spending more than 30% of your income on housing costs is considered “housing

poor.”

Goals Our goal was to generate awareness and support among Virginia college students of the impact of affordable housing and the need for solutions. This goal was established because most people, especially those of the college, age do not know what affordable housing is or how it affects them. Lack of awareness throughout the community, awareness of affordable housing as well as Home Matters is hindered. Furthermore, in order to raise awareness for affordable housing – and ultimately for the organization Home Matters, we would have to first educate and inform our audience of the definition of “affordable housing”. Objective #1 To generate raise awareness among 3,000 current Virginia college students by Feb. 28, 2015, as indicated by social reach on Facebook. Facebook was selected as both a means of distribution and measurement of campaign results. Facebook offers many different media and types of options to share and develop content. Facebook also remains the social media platform with the most users. Therefore, we could assume that most of our defined audience of Virginia college students could be reached via a new Facebook page called “Support Affordable Housing for Students.” Strategy: To demonstrate through social media that affordable housing is an important issue for college students to be aware of and concerned about. Rationale: Most college graduates require affordable housing as they get out of school. Graduates living in Virginia face high rates of unemployment at 12.2 percent for those with some college education and 7 percent for those with at least a bachelor’s degree. Tactic: Content was posted to the Facebook page five days a week. We utilized three different content types. They were posted in accordance to a content calendar that we had created before launching the campaign. (See Appendices for examples)


• Mondays and Fridays: Infographics that defined what affordable housing was and what the current state of housing was.

• Tuesdays and Thursdays: Articles related to affordable housing, cost-burdened students, and homelessness.

• Wednesday: Video public service announcements that were filmed and edited from our primary research intercept interviews. The qualitative data we gathered were used to incite discussion and raise awareness around our key messages.

Evaluation: In all, 3,548 Facebook impressions were generated during February through organic user sharing. This includes the total number of post clicks, likes, comments, and shares on all posts made by the Facebook page “Support Affordable Housing for Students”. The average reach was 488 for video content, 232 for photo content, and 77 for linked content. Post Reach and Engagement


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Total Reach

Page Likes

Page Visits


Demographics of People Reached

Objective #2 To obtain 1,000 signatures from current Virginia college students for an online petition by February 28, 2015. Strategy: To persuade Virginia college students that their support for affordable housing reform is needed and that an online petition could lead to reform. Rationale: Virginia college students are not only affected by the lack of affordable housing availability, they also make up the demographic that has the greatest ability to gain support as most Facebook users are between 18-24 years old. Tactic #1: We utilized our Facebook page to promote the petition via our personal networks as well as through the Virginia Housing Coalitions network. This was accomplished via sharing and liking. Tactic #2: The petition was reposted throughout the month of February to maintain a consistent inflow of signatures.


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Tactic #3: Facebook, personal email networks, and word-of-mouth was utilized to push the petition through our personal networks. Tactic #4: Our petition was disseminated through the listservs at George Mason University, Longwood University, Virginia Tech, Virginia State University, and Virginia Union University. Evaluation: The petition received 57 signatures in February, which did not meet our original objective of 1,000. Our tactics were oriented towards getting the petition in front of people, but not inciting a behavior. Call-to-actions are the most difficult yet rewarding objectives and we were not prepared with appropriate tactics. Our tactics were most likely responsible for the higher Facebook engagement, thus meeting our first objective. Timetable


Challenges Our team ran into a variety of problems, the most prominent related to fully understanding the competition guidelines. With a number of ways to increase national dialogue around affordable housing, we were not sure where to start. Breaking this complex issue down, it began with finding a partner organization that was appropriate for our purposes. We began gathering secondary data that mostly targeted government-assisted housing. After weeks of gathering information that would be used we discovered that the Virginia Housing Coalition was the recommended partner by PRSA for the case study. With this said, we did not get connected with the Virginia Housing Coalition until late into the project. Over the course of several meetings with the Virginia Housing Coalition, we struggled with devising many deliverables for the project that would bring a mutual value to both the team and our partner. Each time we met we understood more about what they would like to have done and what we could realistically accomplish in our time frame. Originally we had been targeting key influencers and decision makers in Virginia. After extensive correspondence with our partner organization, we found that it would be highly unlikely to succeed with such a hard to reach, high caliber target audience. VHC provided us with insight that had us revise most of our campaign plan we had developed and focus on a social media campaign that we would later implement. Another issue we dealt with was coordinating schedules to determine when our team could meet. Conflicting schedules and full course loads made it very difficult to meet with our partner organization and then fill in team members that could not be in attendance. Most of the emails sent out prior to important meetings were reiterating things we went over in the meeting. This created the issue where we spent a lot of time catching everyone up instead of thinking strategically on how to move forward. Maintaining momentum throughout the academic year was also a challenge our team faced. We found ourselves facing additional stress keeping everyone connected during midterms, finals, and throughout winter break. This was overcome through consistent messaging and getting the team physically together after the winter holiday to do a massive recap.

We began this project with a team of five members. Midway through our research phase, one of our members dropped out. At this point we had already registered our team members and could not take on any new members to pick up the extra workload. The setback was minimal at the time because we were still working independently to figure out what angle we should tackle this project. However in the long run, it would have put our team at a maximum potential to have another team member help facilitate the implementation process.


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Lessons Learned While managing full course loads and with no budget, our team has successfully achieved our objective of hitting 3000 Facebook impressions. This project was rewarding in the experience we gained. We took away the following bits of wisdom from this project:

• A budget would have benefitted our campaign greatly. If we had made monetary

resources available, we could have used them for boosted Facebook posts. This would have helped drive the online petition signatures, something we lacked in.

• The Bateman Case Study Competition should be an independent study section or special topics course at Virginia Commonwealth University. This would allow for a set time each week for the team to meet and make solid deadlines that the students would be held accountable for. Considering that this competition is as high caliber as it is, it deserves to be treated as such among VCU students.

• Teams should be solidified before the competition begins. Alternatively, an application and interview process for interested team members could be implemented before the start of the fall semester. Time is of the essence in public relations planning and it should not be wasted with minor tasks like recruitment.

• Being mindful of what we can actually achieve can be the difference between success and failure. Our team overestimated what we could realistically achieve with no budget and a pressing timeline, yet still made a decent impact to our target audience organically, while helping our partner make progress toward their goals.

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Appendix A Infographics


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Appendix B Articles


Appendix C Average unemployment rate of college graduates (and others)

Source: http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=561

12.2 percent unemployment for those with some college education, compared with an unemployment rate of 7.0 percent for those with at least a bachelor's degree (20-24 year olds).


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Appendix D Average salary of college graduates

Source: http://naceweb.org/s09042013/salary-survey-average-starting-class-2013.aspx

Figure 1: Average Salaries by Discipline Broad Category 2013 Average Salary 2012 Average Salary Percent Change

Business $55,635 $51,541 7.9% Communications $43,835 $42,286 3.7%

Computer Science $58,547 $60,038 -2.5% Education $40,337 $39,080 3.2%

Engineering $62,062 $60,639 2.3% Humanities & Social Sciences $37,791 $36,824 2.6%

Math & Sciences $42,731 $42,355 0.9% Overall $45,327 $44,259 2.4%


Appendix E Homelessness rate of college students

Source: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/10/21/homeless-students-american-colleges/3144383/

The Free Application for Federal Student Aid tells the National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth (NAEHCY) that there are 58,000 homeless students on campuses nationwide. Since colleges are not required to keep track of their homeless students, the FASFA form is the only significant data available. According to the NAEHCY, many homeless students trying to go to college don't receive enough financial aid because they can't provide information about their parents or guardians on the form. Several pieces of legislation have helped remove the barriers between homeless students and financial aid, such as the recent Higher Education Act.


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Appendix F College Students ages 16-24 Hours worked vs. Attendance Status

Source: http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_csb.asp

Based on the Current Population Survey (CPS): • 41 percent of full-time college students and 72 percent of part-time college

students 16 to 24 years old were employed in October 2012. o About 7 percent of the full-time students worked 35 or more hours per

week o 18 percent worked 20 to 34 hours per week, and 15 percent worked less

than 20 hours per week. In comparison, o 32 percent of the part-time students worked 35 or more hours per week o 29 percent worked 20 to 34 hours per week o 9 percent worked less than 20 hours per week.


Appendix G Affordable Housing Crisis in Richmond VA

Source: http://www.riscrichmond.org/affordable-housing/

• Nearly 50% of Richmond households pay more than 30% of their income for their housing. According to the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development, housing is considered unaffordable if its costs more than 30% of a family’s income.

• 22% of Richmond households pay more than 50% of their income for housing. Many of those households earn less than 30% of the area median income (which for the Richmond Metro Area equates to less than $20,000 per year). This group is at increased risk of homelessness and is subject to greater family instability, lower educational scores, higher criminal rates and higher incidence of preventable health problems.

• There are more than 3,000 Richmond residents on Richmond Redevelopment Housing Authority’s waiting list for housing, without enough affordable housing to accommodate these citizens; they are at greater risk for homelessness.

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