Community-Generated Interventions: Fostering Community Engagement Among Public Housing Residents

Background and Purpose: Public housing communities are often plagued by high crime, which increases residents' concerns about neighborhood safety, and decreases their levels of community engagement. This quasi-experimental community trial was designed to increase public housing residents' level of community engagement and decrease their concerns about safety through their active (and collective) engagement in community-generated and community-level interventions. We operationalized community-generated intervention as an intervention that was generated by someone who lived and/ or worked in the intervention community. Community-level was operationalized as an intervention that had an impact on everyone who lived and/ or worked in the intervention community.

Methods: Two public housing communities located in a Southern city were the focus of the study. One community served as the intervention group (IG) and the other was the comparison group (CG). Year 1 of the study allowed residents in the IG community to identify community strengths and concerns through the use of photovoice. Year 2 focused on capacity building and intervention implementation for the IG community. Specifically, we funded three community-generated interventions, which were implemented over a 6-month time frame. Each intervention was awarded up to $12,000 in funding. The awarded interventions focused on hunger and food security, exercise and wellness, and community advocacy. In addition to the awarded interventions, a community garden was implemented in the IG community. Year 3 continued intervention implementation and also emphasized intervention sustainability.

Results and Implication: We used proportionate random sampling to survey residents in Year 1 (N=91- IG; N=50- CC) on measures of engagement and safety. In Year 3, only residents who completed the survey in Year 1 completed the survey again (N=51- IG; N=41- CG). We operationalized engagement in terms of four key measures: sense of community, collective efficacy, neighborhood activism, and agency of neighborhood improvement. Our findings showed that safety concerns did not differ between the IG and CG communities (pretest vs. post test). However, sense of community (Cohen D= .62) and agency of neighborhood improvement ((Cohen D= .21) increased to a greater degree in the IG community. Overall, the community interventions significantly increased the general level of engagement and sense of safety among residents within the intervention group (pretext vs. post test). Lessons learned and implications for social work and community practice will be discussed.