Hey Neighbour! Understanding a Pilot Project to Build Neighbourliness into Rental Housing
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Hey Neighbour! Understanding a Pilot Project to Build Neighbourliness into Rental Housing Sadaf Seifi 1 & Rahil Adeli 1 & Meg Holden 1 Received: 29 July 2019 / Accepted: 17 March 2020/ # Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract The Hey Neighbour! pilot project set out to engage two residential buildings, their inhabitants and staff, to animate and increase the intra-building sense of community from within. The research presented here accompanied this pilot in order to devise and test a theory of change for this pilot project in terms of impacts on three key stakeholder groups who stood to benefit in terms of their health and well-being. Because the literature on the importance of sociability, social connections, and neighbourliness for health, well-being, and democratic engagement is diverse and interdisciplinary, crystallizing the expected and achieved impact of a project like Hey Neighbour is a challenge. The two rental buildings are situated in two distinct neighbourhoods in Vancouver, Canada. The City-led pilot project selected four individual residents in particular to take on the role of ‘Resident Animator’ (RA), to trial activities to increase sociability. Results indicate that, by bringing together housing providers, landlords, property managers, researchers, local and regional governments, housing associations and health authorities, the Hey Neighbour project demonstrates potential to achieve greater community well-being in urban vertical communities. Keywords Neighborliness . Social resilience . Multi-unit residential housing . Social
connections . Theory of change . Community well-being
This research was conducted ethically under item 2.5 of the Canadian Tri-Council Policy Statement 2 for ethical research involving human subjects. In this context, informed consent was sought and obtained from participants in this research.
* Sadaf Seifi [email protected] Rahil Adeli [email protected] Meg Holden [email protected]
1
Urban Studies Program, Simon Fraser University, 515 W. Hastings St., 2nd Floor, Vancouver, BC V6B 5K3, Canada
International Journal of Community Well-Being
Introduction In recent years, research has focused on the ways in which social context and quality factors such as social cohesion, social capital, social sustainability, social connectedness, social engagement and social resilience, versus their opposites of social isolation and loneliness, impact outcomes of health and happiness, wellbeing and quality of life (Chaskin et al. 2006; Shirazi and Keivani 2017). This attention to the social dimensions of important life outcomes has taken different forms in different disciplines, and has particular implications and ramifications for governance and engagement work in urban communities, including the evolution of urban social and housing policy. As increasing numbers of urban dwellers live in apartment buildings with rental tenure, for example, how can these living situations feel more socially cohesive and sustainable, more engaged and resilient, less isolated, and lonely, and mor
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