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Easter Hill Village Study Provides Insight
Into Personalizing Space in Affordable Housing

RICHMOND,CA. -- Behavioral scientist and affordable housing researcher, Clare C. Cooper, and her study on Easter Hill Village study contains a lot of very useful observations about the way users of affordable housing live and how designers can accommodate these lifestyles and personalize each families’ dwelling according to their own needs.
According to Herbert J. Gans, Professor of Sociology at Columbia University, this study will have a profound effect on the way architects, physical planners, and landscape planners approach communities similar to Easter Hill Village. The research critiques the effects of design solutions, outlines the hierarchy of needs demanded in a dwelling space and surveys how low-income families use their homes. Ms. Cooper hopes that her work on Easter Hill Village will be “a model for behavioral scientists who want to do relevant empirical research and be helpful to designers at the same time” (Cooper xi). For University of Illinois students who are participating on affordable housing at Emerson Park in East St. Louis, Illinois, Cooper’s observations should provide vital information in understanding how to personalize user spaces in conjunction with serving their various needs.
Richmond, California, the site for this particular study, was once a booming city resulting from post-World War II economic prosperity. Once the war ended, however, the city was faced with severe unemployment and lack of satisfactory housing after the shipyard workers who comprised the bulk of the population were out of work. Eventually housing developments began to close down, people moved elsewhere, or others who were unable to leave added their name to the growing waiting lists of the Richmond Housing Authority (Cooper 1).

HIERARCHY OF NEEDS In her study, Clare Cooper outlines the five basic issues in affordable that address the needs of the poor and how they live. Shelter, being the primary priority for all people is number one proceeded by (2) security, (3) comfort and convenience, (4) socializing and self-expression, and (5) aesthetics. Using this study as a precedent for other affordable housing communities, designers can begin to address how to meet these needs which will result in an understanding on how to personalize a house that's comfortable, convenient, and secure for the user. Keeping this in mind, designers for the Emerson Park project will have a more focused idea on how to create user-friendly dwellings.	GENERAL OBSERVATIONS Cooper’s general realizations through this study offer a lot of insight even before the designer meets with the user. First, the designer must realize that design solutions cannot simply hide the economic and social facts of the user’s life. Even without a limited budget, this is the case. These users are constantly reminded of their status within society and a home design won’t change this matter. This does not mean, however, that designers can not design a comfortable, convenient, and attractive dwelling. Secondly no population, not even the poor, are homogeneous in all characteristics, values, and interests. Therefore, no single design solution will please everyone. Various design solutions do become very crucial however when there is a limited budget and thus limited space. The challenge for the designer, as a result, lies in creating a user oriented design that also “minimizes the impact of too little space( ). All these points will prove to be major challenges in Emerson Park as well.
PERSONALIZING AFFORDABLE HOUSING Most middle to high-end residential design relies on architectural detail, grandness of scale, and extravagant materials to articulate the owner’s identity. In affordable housing design, a combination of budget and site factors changes the medium by which personalization of a home can be established. For the most part, user-specific details such as display and storage areas, and flexibility and arrangement of spaces are the only ways that designers can personalize affordable housing. The rest must come from what the user brings to the house such as decorations, pictures, and furniture. For example, a large family with a lot of younger children may want a bedroom that can easily be used as a playroom which in turn may demand creative ways to store children’s toys when they are not being used in order to conserve space. Many unique situations like these may be presented in Emerson Park which will force designers to closely evaluate how to personalize the user’s home. Sociologist Lee Rainwater contends that the middle classes see the home as a place for self-realization and self-expression, or as a base for a wide range of social interactions while lower classes tend to perceive the home a source of protection or a “house-as-a-haven” from the outside environment. With this in mind, privacy, not only between spaces within, but between the house and the outside environment and the user-friendliness of the house is that much more important. Though the residents of Easter Hill Village thought that the exterior was considerably less important than the interior, according to Cooper’s study, many felt that individualization of each unit was desirable. This design feature accomplished two things in Easter Hill Village. First, the residents felt they were more of an individual than how the government perceived them, and secondly, and individualized exterior façade made their home feel like it was their own instead of someplace they shared with the help of the government. Various methods for achieving this effect is the use of different materials, building height, façade variation, color, size and providing the means for each family to add landscaping. Although Easter Hill Village is comprised of row housing, individuality in the interior spaces as well as on the exterior façade will help foster a sense of ownership, pride, and respect for their living environment.	KITCHEN Clare Cooper in her study found that the source of the most dissatisfaction among users came from the kitchen. Because this room is the most used room and is also the entertaining room for most of the families (rather than the living room) the kitchen needs to be inviting and comfortable. In order to adapt to this lifestyle, natural as well as artificial lighting design issues must be carefully considered. For larger families, more counter-space, fixtures, and cabinet space are desirable as well as a possible pantry space for food and extra dishes. Because space is at a premium, the more creative use of storage in the kitchen, the better. Perhaps, add-on spaces such as a pantry can provide a space for more general storage needs if kitchen supplies don’t demand as much space. By making spaces flexible, the design can accommodate many different lifestyles and families. The dining area’s relationship with the kitchen is another major design issue. Many larger families living in Easter Hill Village reported that they had to eat in shifts because the dining area was too small to accommodate all family members at one time. To preserve space in the working area of the kitchen in order to allow for more dining area, counter-tops and cabinets are used to their potential if they are able to be accessed from both sides. BATHROOMS Although there is not too much difference in the needs of bathrooms nor did Cooper’s surveys reflect any problems with a standard bathroom, there are a few guidelines in order to customize the bathroom for the user. For families with samll children, space to change and bathe the baby is essential. Extra counter space, vanities, and two sinks all help to secure that young, large families have all the necessary features needed to operate in a bathroom. Also, storage for toiletries, surfaces for plants and an abundance of natural lighting help to personalize a frequently used place such as the bathroom. One problem that was addressed in Cooper’s study is the need for a second bathroom in a two- story house. This is convenient for guests as well as children who come in from playing outside to clean-up instead of walking through the house with dirty feet. Again, a lot of design consideration and research will be needed to accommodate specific needs of the user in Emerson Park.
LIVING ROOM While this room is the showcase room where guests are entertained, Cooper’s study shows this to be the opposite among users of affordable housing. While the kitchen is the main dwelling space for the family, the living room provides space for a few, unvaried tasks. Many residents in Easter Hill Village reported that the living room was only used for watching TV or used as the children’s playroom. Other observations by Cooper suggest that a large living room may make users of affordable housing self-conscious about their financial status because they may not have enough furnishings to make the living room look complete. Thus the designer must be aware of the user’s intentions for the living room in order to provide the best design possible. Depending on the size of the family, the living room can become a more important room based on the uses of the other rooms in the home. Designing the room with alcoves and built-in shelving units helps to organize tasks within the living room and showcase any decorations such as pictures and decorations in an organized manner. These two design elements help to overcome the small requirement of space adequate for the user. Careful planning of positions of windows and doors in the living room and the overall shape of the room will give the user lots of different options dealing with furniture layout. All of these features make the room more flexible and more adaptable to the changing lifestyles of the family. In the single-family housing units of Emerson Park, all of these and other additional design issues will be pertinent in the design of the living room and the surrounding spaces.	BEDROOMS According to Cooper’s study, bedrooms were a major area in the house for creating an identity. Bedrooms, overall, are easily flexible rooms where activities other than sleeping may occur. Bedrooms may serve as dens, children’s playrooms, or other user-specific rooms which help to personalize the home. Cooper sites specific requirements for bedrooms in her study such as orientation to the sun, location in a private sector of the home, and adequately sound screened. For children’s rooms, adaptability is a huge issue as children’s needs change faster than adult’s needs as children get older. Playrooms may be doubled up with bedrooms as long as there is enough storage and other features to accommodate those two functions. Differences between one-story and two-story dwellings can also have a profound effect on the overall success of a bedroom. Typically, families with young children and elderly people prefer one-story housing because the multiple floors make it harder to circulate throughout the house and parents are unable to keep a close look at the children. Two-story houses are advantageous because rooms such as the bedroom can be left messier when they are upstairs when they are upstairs, away from guests. Also, since older children tend to make noise generating from music or friends, having a second floor minimizes the amount of noise on the mainly public first floor. Bedrooms will be a major design issue in the single-family housing units of Emerson Park.

PERSONAL OBSERVATIONS
After studying Clare Cooper’s book, “Easter Hill Village” I found a few recurring themes that may be helpful to reiterate in order to facilitate the personalization of space among the many different user-types found at Emerson Park in St. Louis. In order to fully personalize affordable housing, flexibility of each room is vital as the needs of the users in these homes will constantly change. In addition, the small scale of the project will only for small square-footages. Therefore, creative use of alcoves, storage and display units, partitions, and accessibility to certain features will help to make the space feel a little bigger than it actually is. Not to mention that it will also make it a comfortable, flexible home as well.
In order to fully accomplish all of these goals, however, the designer must be aware of the needs of its users and how to address these needs through design. It’s only then that we will fully realize the success of affordable housing for its users.
All observations in this section, unless otherwise noted, were extracted from “Easter Hill Village” by Clare C. Cooper.