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 Richmond, 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, how it affects us as college students and 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 each playing 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 awareness building as a form of
promotion and focuses more on the public policy making side of affordable housing and
awareness.
Research
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 excavating the internet for secondary research in order to not only
find the actual definition of what affordable housing is, but to identify and find
information and statistics about target audiences.
Primary Research
Primary, qualitative research consisted of intercept interviews with random
pedestrians in two different public locations: the Carytown business district in the City of
Richmond, Va., and the Student Commons at Virginia Commonwealth University.
Interviews in the public setting
First Set of Interviews
The purpose of conducting one of the sets of interviews in Carytown was to gain
insight into the views and awareness of Richmond-area residents regarding affordable
housing. Carytown is a popular destination for residents of Richmond and the
surrounding counties with high pedestrian traffic.

In the first set of interviews in Carytown, intercepts were limited to the following
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
is. Therefore, the answers to the other questions asked were skewed because of those
misperceptions. Commonly, some respondents 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 peoples
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 was interesting however, was attitudes toward
affordable housing being developed in someones own neighborhood. Though the none of
the interviewees did not seem to personally have a bias against affordable housing being
placed in their neighborhood, most felt that a stigma could be associated with people who
need affordable housing. Also, two interview subjects 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 would be difficult to achieve
so college-aged adults in Richmond was selected as a key audience. Educating this
particular audience also would have a more lasting impact.
Second Set of Interviews
The second set of interviews took place in the Student Commons at Virginia
Commonwealth University (VCU). The purpose of conducting the interviews with
random pedestrians in the Student Commons was to understand representative options of
college-aged adults. The Student Commons is a public space with a high degree of foot
traffic. Following are questions that were asked of members of this 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?

The answers to these questions too portrayed a level of unconsciousness to the the
subject of affordable housing in 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 may be due to the students not
knowing what 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: the unemployment
rate of college graduates, we found statistics on the homelessness rate of college students,
the rate of part-time student workers, the average salary of college graduates, and the
overall affordable housing situation in Virginia as a whole. All findings came from
government organizations and reputable news sources.
Some of the most impactful information we found was:
National Statistics
1. 58,000 college students in the US are considered homeless
2. 41 percent of full-time college students were employed in 2012
a. 18 percent of full-time college students worked 20 to 34 hours per week
b. 15 percent of full-time college students worked less than 20 hours per
week
3. 72 percent of part-time college students were employed in 2012
a.
32 percent of the part-time students worked 35 or more hours per week
b.
29 percent worked 20 to 34 hours per week
4.
5.
a.
6.

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.
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
Authoritys 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 can affect college students.
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.
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
The 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 mediums and types of options to share
and develop content. Facebook also remains as 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 bachelors 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.

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

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.
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 higher Facebook incites, our
first objective.
Timetable

Target Audiences
As our goal was 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.
Challenges
Our team ran into a variety of problems, the most prominent was 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 targets government assisted housing. After weeks of
gathering information that would be used to create a portal, we discovered that the
Virginia Housing Coalition was recommended by the Richmond PRSA chapter for the
case study. 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 value to both
us and them. 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 scrap most of the plan we had developed and focus on a social media
campaign that we would later implement.
Another issue we dealt with was finding a time that everyone in our team could
meet. Conflicting schedules made it very difficult to meet with our partner organization
and then fill in the 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. The
dilemma that this created was that we spent a lot of time catching everyone up and not
thinking strategically on how to move forward.
Maintaining momentum throughout the academic was also a hindrance our team
faced. We would face more stress keeping everyone connected during midterms, finals,
and throughout winter break. This was overcome through consistent messaging and
getting the team physically together 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. In the long run, it would have put our team
at a premium to have another member to help facilitate the implementation process.

Lessons Learned
While managing full course loads and with no budget, our team was 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 monetary

resources available, we could have used them for boosted Facebook posts. This
would have helped drive the petition signatures, something we lacked in.
The Bateman Case Study Competition should be an independent study section at
our school, Virginia Commonwealth University. This would allow for a set time
each week for the team to meet and solid deadlines that the students would be
held accountable for. Considering that this high competition is as high caliber as it
is, it deserves to be treated as such with college credit rewarding quality
communication campaigns.
Teams should be solidified before the competition begins. Time is very important
in public relations campaigns 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.

Appendix I
Infographics

Appendix II
Articles

Appendix IIV
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).

Appendix IV
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 V
Homelessness rate of college students

Source: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/10/21/homeless-studentsamerican-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.

Appendix VI
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 VII
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
familys 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 Authoritys waiting list for housing, without enough affordable housing
to accommodate these citizens; they are at greater risk for homelessness.