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Exploring How Private Multifamily Developers Define and

Conceptualize Health and Well-BeingPreliminary Case Study ResultsCollege of Natural Resources | Center for Geospatial Analytics

Margaret van Bakergem, Aaron Hipp, Jinoh Park, Xi Wang, Traci Rider

Background

Public Health Crisis = Chronic Diseases

• Leading cause of death and disability in U.S. Responsible for 7 of 10 deaths

• Risk factors include sedentary behavior and physical inactivity

• Environmental characteristics are important health determinants

Chronic Disease Health Care Expenditure

• 18% of GDP

• More than 75c of every $1 of health care is spent on CD

• Costs $1.7trillion annually

Rapid Urbanization and Multifamily Housing Demand

• 4.4 million additional units needed by 2025

• 443,000 units expected to be built in 2018

• Between 2005 and 2016, 91% of newly formed households were renters

Significance

Multifamily developers’ response to growth of urban populations

affords a largely unconsidered opportunity for the real estate industry

to positively impact the health and well-being of communities.

• Elements of health as a development differentiator are emerging

• Important to define health terms from multifamily perspective

• Can provide foundation for health-term standardizations and metric development

Research Purpose

The scope of this preliminary research is to use a multiple case study approach to

explore how private multifamily developers define and talk about health and well-being.

• What are the processes for intentionally incorporating health strategies?

• How and why are health strategies implemented

• What multifamily features are perceived as health promotive

Methods

• Purposive sampling to identify private multifamily developers (n=2)

• Developers deemed early adopters in considering health and well-being

• Semi-structured interviews with two developers for current study

• Thematic coding process to identify emergent health themes and terms

• QSR NVivo used for coding processes

• Health-related excerpts from transcribed interviews selected by coding team

• Excerpts categorized by health topic & scale

Results

• 311 health-related transcript excerpts in 2 interviews

• 83 health-related terms identified

• Collapsed into 20 health amenity categories

• 20% of the 311 excerpts were about place-making

• WELL Building certification was only certification system referenced

• “General” category was in top 5 most-referenced health term

• Broad discussion of health with no specific terminology

• A health-related object or amenity was not explicitly identified

Conclusions

• Multifamily well-suited to implement health considerations given the home’s

influence on health behaviors and outcomes

• Health conceptualizations need more formalized definitions that use

multidisciplinary input for greatest translation potential

• Health terms identified in this study were not novel in terms of known

amenities; it is their intentional use for health promotion that is notable

• Developing definitions of health and well-being concepts may lead

to novel incentivization structures with financial indicators, showing that

health and well-being can be an investable attribute in the real estate industry

• Further exploration of health and well-being considerations with additional

early adopter multifamily developers can provide other insights into how

real estate development decision making can promote community-wide

health benefits across different real estate sectors and markets.

Figure 4. Count of health-related references in two multifamily developer interviewsFigure 3. Features comprising “Place-Making’ category

Table 1. Description of health amenities and health topics

Figure 5. List of 7 health and wellness concepts in the WELL Building Standard (IWBI, 2018)

Table 2. Collapsed health categories (n=20) by health topic

Discussion

Health Themes

• Formative look at how health is conceptualized from multifamily perspective

• “Place Making” was most referenced health category

• Possibly indicates tendency to connect health to user experiences

• Social- and convenience-oriented amenities (i.e., lifestyle)

• “General” prevalence = ambiguity in targeting health strategies?

• May indicate inability to identify specific health strategies

• Lack of awareness of health terminology

• Shows opportunity to clarify terms to maximize health promotion

Defining Health Strategies Holistically and Across Disciplines

• Next steps will be to standardize & operationalize concepts of health

• Will provide foundation for developing health strategy framework

• Collaborative effort between public health and real estate disciplines

Formal Integration into Certification Systems

• The WELL Building StandardTM has several concepts and optimizations that

already overlap with the identified health terms discovered in this study

• Formalizing this overlap can differentiate multifamily developers’ projects

as they intentionally integrate health into decision-making

Value Creation in Health

• This study underscores the potential value capitalization health and

well-being considerations can bring to multifamily development

• Understanding financial, social, environmental, and health benefits may

assist in leveraging the health considerations early adopter developers are

already implementing into translatable and understandable strategies for

all developers

Health LanguageWe believe in :Living in balance

Fostering CommunityBeing Restorative

Natural lightSustainable livingA good long walk

Figure 2. Jane Jacobs quote & health language

Figure 1. Total health amenities (n=83) collapsed into 20 categories

Jane JacobsThe requisite for

outdoor activity and play is not pretentious equipment…but rather

space at an immediately convenient and

interesting place