Oscar Romero

Executive Summary

The NYC[x] Co-Labs: Housing Rights Challenge emerged from a series of participatory workshops with community experts from Inwood and Washington Heights. In August 2018, NYCx Co-Labs engaged 35 Inwood/Washington Heights residents, representatives of community-based organizations, entrepreneurs and educators in a series of workshops on housing, education, health, arts & culture, small businesses, and immigrant affairs to identify priority issues in the community. 

The outcomes of the first five issue area workshops held in September 2018 can be found in the report: Building Community Power through Creative Technologies. The community unanimously advocated to have another community workshop focused particularly on the needs of immigrant communities.

The results of the sixth workshop can be found in the report: Building Community Power: Challenges to Immigrant Communities.

This research was complemented with six one-on-one interviews with local healthcare professionals and stakeholders, 191 relevant data points from the OneNYC challenge survey, expert interviews, a literature review, and participatory workshops with NYC City agencies.

The data collected from the community workshops can be found in the following data visualization page. 

After extensive research and iteration with City agencies and the Community Technology Board, the NYCx Co-Labs Housing Rights Challenge asked global innovators the following question:

How might we support the provision of more strategic, targeted and tailored information to tenants about their housing rights, enabling them to take action?

To learn more about the challenge design, selection process, selection criteria, see the NYCx Co-Labs Housing Rights Challenge Manual.