Homeless Resource Center seeks AHAB funding for year‑long affordable‑housing awareness campaign

Brett Hartford, executive director of the Homeless Resource Center, asked the Affordable Housing Advisory Board on Oct. 9 for a grant to run a year‑long public awareness campaign about affordable housing in Lawrence.

Hartford told the board he regularly fields questions from people who do not know “where the front door is” for affordable housing and that misinformation about how affordable housing affects neighborhoods is widespread. “I don’t understand affordable housing in our community,” he said, arguing that the center can translate complicated policy and make it understandable to residents.

Hartford described a multimedia program that would include 52 weekly short videos, radio public service announcements, presentations at churches and other community venues, and post‑event surveys for in‑person sessions. He said the Homeless Resource Center’s Facebook posts drew about 54,000 individual views over a recent 28‑day period and reached an audience of roughly 9,800 people, and he proposed pairing the center’s social analytics with publicly available data from the city and county dashboards.

Board members asked for details on geographic targeting and measurement. Hartford said most engagement came from Kansas and that he planned to use public data dashboards alongside the center’s social metrics to produce quarterly reports tied to the city/county place‑for‑everyone indicators. He also said his work links people to job supports and that his organization hires local people for paid work as part of a workforce program.

Hartford emphasized the campaign’s two goals: help people in need find the right entry points to services, and reduce community fears by showing what affordable housing actually looks like. He invited the board to suggest ways to coordinate dashboard data and measurement with city staff.

The board did not take a vote on the request during the meeting.