Community Collaboration

Abstract

The purposes of this community-based research project is to evaluate needs of low-income residents of Lexington not met by the local community and to unveil opportunities that exist for further community collaboration between local non-profit agencies. Mountain View Terrace Apartments (“MVT”), a Section-8 housing development funded under the national Housing and Urban Development branch (“HUD”) was the cohort for our research. After speaking with MVT Director Marilyn Alexander, we gained approval for conducting interviews with Mountain View Terrace tenants. Along with these interviews, we conducted several interviews with local non-profit leaders to identify programs and partnerships that already exist and barriers to the delivery of services from particular organizations. Lastly, we compiled research on low-income housing developments in the comparable city of Waynesboro to determine other practices that could be implemented at Mountain View Terrace to better serve the needs of the tenants and potentially other low-income residents in Lexington. [From Project Overview and Method]