I work in the affordable housing sector. What do you want to know? My suggestion is to go, spend time with people. Ask lots of questions about what their transportation needs are and ask what it would take for them to ride a bike and if that would help. If you don't ride a bike, why not? Take your time and build relationships.The best way to get to meet people is to do an onsite bike tune-up day. Poster the buildings and get all your volunteers to offer free bike repair. You will meet lots of people, have fun, get people on bikes and have your questions answered. We are working with inner city schools to increase ridership and the common concerns are road safety (low safety skills, cars or sketchy people on the way), bike safety (disrepair, theft or vandalism) and pride (I don't want anyone to see me riding an old bike). Our experience is that most kids have a bike but for some reason, they are not rideable. (Often they are fairly new department store bikes that are still not rideable.) Jeff NevenNew Hope Bike Co-opHamilton, ON Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2012 12:20:31 -0500 From: micah@cyclesforchange.org To: thethinktank@lists.bikecollectives.org Subject: [TheThinkTank] Partnering with public housing
Does anyone have any experience working with public housing? We were approached to coordinate programming around increasing ridership among public housing patrons. I appreciate any advice that you may be able to offer.
Sincerely, Micah Thompson