Sunday, March 25, 2012
Demographics
Thanks to the work done by Ashley we now know that half the population of Belvedere Park is populated by renters? That means that those residents will have little or no interest in the progress and status of the community. Our question has to be, "How do we encourage renters to be interested and invested in the advancement of the community? Regardless of their renter status they would still benefit from the HBI, healthy eating, active living through policy, systems and environmental change. How do we help them to appreciate the opportunity to enhance the community and take advantage of this opportunity? How do we motivate renters? Ashley reports research that shows renters are most commonly transient and therefore not as engaged in their community. They also have less time to commit to extracurricular activities because of longer working hours, family commitments, etc. How do we overcome this barrier to the advancement of the HBI?
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I would venture to say that our time, energy and resources would be better spent focusing on homeowners, engaging a larger percentage of them, and creating a neighborhood that is a desireable area to own a home because over the long run that will shift the ratio of renters to homeowners, which is the avenue to success in our objectives. there,is no way around a long term solution because economics underlies the current situation. Thank you for reading...your thoughts?
ReplyDeleteThanks for the post Maria. It works. Yea! I think that you are correct about focusing on homeowners. How do we do that without openly showing preferential treatment? Perhaps some targeted marketing would be in order. Also I wonder if the underserved market we are trying to reach is the homeowner or renter population. Probably some of both. Let's keep the conversation going.
ReplyDelete50% is too big a number to discount. I think we ought to treat a renter the same as a homeowner - they live in Belvedere too, so why not treat them the same. If we can get a list of apartments, and the owners of the complexes, perhaps we can leverage that information to market to this audience.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I think it's important to compare the rental numbers with data from other communities in the area.
ReplyDeleteD2D gets us in front of both pops and yes, there are some renters who will want to engage...so a face-to-face encounter gives them that opportunity.
ReplyDeletePaul- what would you look for in comparing #s of renters?
If these are long term renters, I think their buy-in would be much the same as a homeowner in many aspects of our project. It's probably too complicated to determine their longevity in terms of rent, but of that 50% I'd be willing to guess a good number of them have rented for years at the same address. They simply can't afford to move.
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