HEALTHY DEVELOPMENT MEASUREMENT TOOL

HOPE SF – Redevelopment of San Francisco’s Public Housing

HOPE SF Background

HOPE SF is an initiative to rebuild San Francisco's severely distressed public housing sites, while increasing affordable housing and ownership opportunities and transforming the sites into vibrant, thriving communities. Improving the health and welfare of existing residents and the quality of life in surrounding communities are explicit goals of the HOPE SF initiative.

Since 2005, the San Francisco Housing Authority, Redevelopment Agency, Mayor's Office of Housing (MOH) and private developers have been engaged in predevelopment planning and community engagement as part of the HOPE SF process. In 2010, the first redevelopment project began in Hunters' View.

For additional information about HOPE SF, please visit:

http://hope-sf.org/

HOPE SF, SFDPH and the HDMT

The Healthy Development Measurement Tool (HDMT) is a comprehensive evaluation metric to consider health needs in urban development plans and projects. To support HOPE SF goal of improving resident and community health through rebuild planning and site design, the San Francisco Department of Public Health (SFDPH) and MOH are using the Healthy Development Measurement Tool (HDMT) to evaluate neighborhood conditions, community planning and project design at three HOPE SF project sites: Sunnydale, Potrero, and Westside Courts.

Since 2008, SFDPH has:

• Conducted baseline conditions assessments of three HOPE SF neighborhoods using HDMT indicator data and site visits
• Begun to identify best practices for promoting social cohesion in new or redeveloped mixed-income neighborhoods
• Used the HDMT community health objectives and development target checklist to identify design needs and potential gaps/holes in HOPE SF projects
• Provided preliminary recommendations and potential mitigations and design strategies to address identified health gaps to project development teams
• Met with members of the HOPE SF evaluation team to discuss using the HDMT as part of the ongoing evaluation of neighborhood conditions in HOPE SF neighborhoods

In the coming months, SFDPH plans to continue communication with MOH staff and the project development teams to identify other opportunities to collaborate and promote consideration of health within the HOPE SF development process.

Baseline Conditions Assessment Overview

The initial HDMT assessment of the three project sites was conducted in spring and summer 2009. This assessment uses data from the 2008 version of the HDMT. Consequently there are differences between the data currently available on the HDMT website. All references to this assessment should clearly indicate that the 2008 version of the HDMT was applied.

In October 2009, SFDPH released the HOPE SF Baseline Conditions Assessment reports to MOH staff and HOPE SF project development teams. Since the release of the reports, a number of data miscalculations were discovered. SFDPH amended the data and re-released an updated September 2010 version of the assessments. This updated version includes an errata sheet summarizing revised indicators in the beginning of each report. Revised reports are available below.

HOPE SF and Health Reports

• Potrero Terrace & Annex Baseline Conditions Assessment (pdf)
• Sunnydale Baseline Conditions Assessment (pdf)
• Westside Courts Baseline Conditions Assessment (pdf)
• White Paper on Social Cohesion and Community Safety in New and Redeveloped Mixed Income Housing (pdf)
• SFDPH Fact Sheet: Overview of HOPE SF HDMT Findings (pdf)

For more information, please contact:

Megan Gaydos, MPH
San Francisco Department of Public Health
Email: Megan.gaydos@sfdph.org
Tel: (415) 252-3919