Civic Innovation

Equitable community engagement for strategic planning, program design, and process improvement is a key factor of success. Diverse perspectives from the communities who use a program or process will help to create a solution that works and meets user needs. Conducting equitable community engagement is easier said than done, however. Here are a few tips to ensure you’re reaching all of your communities in your solution design.

I got started in local government with the Syracuse Innovation Team and genuinely had no idea just how much I would fall in love with the work we did. I quickly realized that local government is where the action really happens. We worked on everything from improving road quality to predicting water main breaks, increasing rental housing safety, reducing housing instability, and making it easier for small businesses to get registered in the city.

HCD is a five-step problem solving process that puts the user (the constituent, the resident, the customer) at the center of the solution design process. It allows for the solution design to get to the root causes of the problems, come up with creative solutions, and actually test their effectiveness before full implementation.

This post is the third in a series of three about the Innovation Team’s housing stability initiatives. To read the first two posts, go here.

A little over a year ago, we asked for your input on what our next priority area should be. After six weeks of public engagement, nearly 900 votes from residents, and input from the Common Council, the Mayor chose Housing Stability as our next challenge to tackle. Last month, the City of Syracuse launched 11 new housing stability initiatives to improve housing and reduce transiency for our residents…

This post is the second in a series of three about the Innovation Team’s housing stability initiatives. To read the first post, go here.

A little over a year ago, we asked for your input on what our next priority area should be. After six weeks of public engagement, nearly 900 votes from residents, and input from the Common Council, the Mayor chose Housing Stability as our next challenge to tackle. Last month, the City of Syracuse launched 11 new housing stability initiatives to improve housing and reduce transiency for our residents…

This post is the first in a series of three about the Innovation Team’s housing stability initiatives.

A little over a year ago, we asked for your input on what our next priority area should be. After six weeks of public engagement, nearly 900 votes from residents, and input from the Common Council, the Mayor chose Housing Stability as our next challenge to tackle. Last month, the City of Syracuse launched 11 new housing stability initiatives to improve housing and reduce transiency for our residents…

This post was originally published on Innovate Syracuse on August 31, 2018.

[VIDEO] In July, the Innovation Team hosted three community ideation sessions around Housing Stability. During these sessions, the team spoke with residents about their housing stability challenges in Syracuse and what they thought could be done to start to address them…

This post was originally published on Innovate Syracuse on July 13, 2018.

[VIDEO] On June 15th, the City of Syracuse Division of Code Enforcement hosted Healthy Housing 101, an event held to teach local residents and service providers how to spot code violations in homes. Our code inspectors reviewed what to look for in homes--mold, infestations, unsafe staircases--as well as who citizens can contact when they have an issue getting problems fixed.

This post was originally published on Innovate Syracuse on February 28, 2018.

We are excited to announce that the next priority area the i-team will focus on is Housing Stability! After a six week public engagement process and input from our Common Councilors, the Mayor has decided that housing stability is the best challenge for the team to take on…

This post was originally published on Innovate Syracuse on February 1, 2018.

Voting for our next priority area is officially open! After an initial round of submitting ideas, six issues emerged as the most popular choices, from which we are now asking residents to vote on their top picks using a new online platform to builds community engagement…

This post was originally published on Innovate Syracuse on December 27, 2017.

A month and a half ago, we announced the beginning of our TOP (Tenant-Owner-Proactive) Pilot for Code Enforcement. After its first six weeks, we have some exciting preliminary results to share with you…

This post was originally published on Innovate Syracuse on September 27, 2017.

We’ve posted before about how a human-centered design approach is integral to our research process, but it’s also a big part of our ideation and initiative development. Similar to how we need to work with residents who interact with systems and challenges every day to fully understand them, we need input from residents to know exactly what ideas will work most effectively to help them…

This post was originally published on Innovate Syracuse on September 14, 2017.

“Preparation is key. I can’t stress that enough. Do whatever it is that you need to prepare for your day, whether that’s having a cup of coffee or saying a prayer, and you’ll be able to take on anything…”

This post was originally published on Innovate Syracuse on June 8, 2017.

Driving through many of Syracuse’s neighborhoods today, one can’t help but notice the boarded up vacant houses, trash-strewn vacant lots, crumbling porches, and chipping paint. One might ask, how did this happen? How did we get here? And, what impact does neighborhood blight have on the city and its residents? What are the consequences to living in unstable and unsafe housing? And how does it affect our residents’ access to opportunity?…