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Understanding that Community Health Workers may need space to work, gather, and meet with community members, we propose leveraging vacant spaces within the communities most in need to create new CHW Hubs. We imagine these Hubs as spaces that serve several aspects of the proposal. They can be spaces for organizing and accessing help, information distribution centers, and an alternative to the punative court system. In the River Park Tower vicinity, we’ve located three store front hubs. Each are within walking distance to the high eviction towers, but can also serve the surrounding community, which has a particularly high density of evictions
By utilizing the storefront typology the Hubs can be integrated into the neighborhood. They can be both a destination for someone looking for assistance as well as a space that people walking down the street can happen upon.
We've located one Hub in a storefront on University Avenue, adjacent to the Sedgwick New York Public Library.
Inside the Hub, we imagine these to be open and flexible with spaces for sharing information, assistance, and well as mediation for tenants and landlords.
The mediation space is non-hierarchical and more collaborative than what is seen in a traditional courtroom--with Community Health Workers, tenants and landlords working together to resolve housing issues.