Understanding the housing affordability gap
Courtney Croteau '07 is concerned about the housing affordability gap in San Francisco. After she took a studio class trip to San Francisco as part of one of her courses at Clark nearly a year ago, she had an idea for a project. Just not the resources to do it.
Thanks to funding from her Anton Fellowship, Croteau's research project became a reality. She spent summer 2006 in San Francisco interning at Asian Neighborhood Design, a nonprofit organization with programs in architecture, community planning, employment training, and family and youth resources. She assisted with projects in community planning, including an affordable housing and mapping project, using geographic information system (GIS) technology to show where all of the affordable housing built in the city over the past 30 years is located.
"The project is intended to provide information about the current gap in the supply of affordable housing for low-income households to enable policy makers to identify areas where more housing is needed and where existing affordable housing needs to be preserved," she explains.
Her Anton Fellowship has led to Croteau's work on an additional independent research project on issues concerning housing affordability in San Francisco. She has focused her research on the Mission District‹specifically, its historic role as a working class neighborhood, and the current pipeline developments that continue to bring market rate condos to the area causing further gentrification.
The Anton Fellowship Program was established six years ago by a gift from Clark alumni Barbara '56 and the late Thomas '56 Anton. The Steinbrecher Fellowship Program was created earlier this year by Phyllis and Stephen '55 Steinbrecher in memory of their son David C. Steinbrecher '81. Both Fellowships are designed to spark students' excitement about the pursuit of intellectual ideas and public service and to stimulate discussions within the Clark community
Give to the Clark Fund now and help more students like Courtney Croteau pursue their intellectual passions while making a difference in the world. Please give today.
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Understanding the importance of affordability in housing for all people in San Francisco can give insight to the effects that housing development can have on people in urban areas in the United States and internationally.
