North Texas Regional Housing Assessment

2017–2018

Key Personnel:  Kate Lattimore Norris, Ph.D.
Services:  community engagement, public involvement documentation, messaging/branding, project management/quality control, facilitator training, cultural sensitivity training

The North Texas Regional Housing Assessment (NTRHA) was created as a consortium of 20 Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) cities, counties, and housing authorities to respond to the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) requirement to complete an Assessment of Fair Housing (AFH). A team of researchers representing the Department of Civil Engineering and the College of Architecture, Planning and Public Affairs of the University of Texas at Arlington were contracted to complete the assessment on behalf of consortium members using HUD-provided data and analytical tools.

The AFH represented a major shift in focus on the part of HUD and the entities completing the report because it required HUD-provided data to be revisualized and contextualized with local knowledge. Thus, public input largely served as the foundation of the report.  Kate Lattimore Norris, Vice President at Pavlik and Associates, took the helm of public participation at NTRHA in the spring of 2017.

For over a year, Dr. Norris created and implemented a comprehensive community engagement strategy that not only met HUD requirements put forth in the AFH but exceeded industry standards in terms of impact. Her work supported other researchers in creating a useful analysis on which many participating entities would base later plans and reports. All input was incorporated in meaningful ways by fitting the public participation strategy to each stage of the project and using experience to inform data-gathering in later stages. Community engagement through NTRHA was inclusive, responsive, and significant.

The NTRHA team met engagement challenges in every community and elicited input from many populations typically excluded from planning processes, including individuals living in Racially/Ethnically Concentrated Areas of Poverty (R/ECAPs), persons with disabilities, and persons who are limited English proficient (LEP). The public engagement component of the research concluded in the summer of 2018, and NTRHA used the data and input collected to write 20 AFHs and one revolutionary regional AFH capturing a comprehensive review of fair housing in North Central Texas. This comprehensive research supported an understanding in disparities in access to opportunity across North Texas and resulted in policies that address these issues.