Engaging Place – Outreach Plan

The strategy recommended to be the primary one would be a text based data collection system which would be integrated between the city and the county. When considering just Hill District, we could be looking at 500 respondents per year and for the whole city it would be 5000 respondents.

The stakeholders:

1. Allegheny County – to have access to service request inspections interface of Housing and Community Development department. Also, a source of funding for interface

2. City of Pittsburgh – To have access to 311 interfaces and also a source of funding for interface

3. Hill District Consensus group – To create awareness and know the locations of the outreach posters.

4. Pittsburgh Community Reinvestment Group – Funding source for outreach

5. WPRDC – To talk to the stakeholders about sharing and making the data open source

Cost Considerations:

1. A ‘textizen’ based system costs around $3-$9 per respondent on an average. Considering a capacity of 500 respondents in the Hill District, the costs could be up to $4500 for the setup.

2. As this is eventually a city-wide issue, a program like this could cost around $45,000 for the initial setup. This does not include the operational costs or salaries city, or county are paying to people associated with this.

Deployment:

1. Areas where the posters/pamphlets would be put up will be decided in conjunction with the Hill District Consensus group which has residents on its board.

2. Some of the possible sites for an outreach program in the Hill district could be:

a. Hill District First resource center

b. Hill house association building

c. Thelma Lovette YMCA

d. Hill District Consensus Group office

Possible Interface