Spatial Assessments of Seattle Housing Authority’s Senior Housing and their Proximity to Parks, Public Transit Stations, and Medical Facilities

Abstract

The built environment has the capacity to enhance or diminish quality of life. This capacity provides the reason and motivation to provide an environment that is able to facilitate the needs of individuals. To accomplish this aim, it is important to consider the diversity of needs of different age groups. This thesis focuses on the proximity of Seattle Housing Authority’s Senior Housing communities to certain built environment amenities that have been found to improve senior well-being and outcomes. These amenities include proximity to parks, public transportation, and medical facilities for those seniors living within the 23 low-income housing owned by the Seattle Housing Authority (SHA). This analysis uncovered variance in the distribution of the amenities. The analysis found that: i) 82% are within a .25 mile radius of a park; ii) 100% of the SHAs have public transportation stations within .25 miles; iii) 65% of the SHAs are within .25 miles of a pharmacy; iv) 13% of SHAs are in .25 mile proximity to a hospital and; v) 39% of the SHAs are within a .25 mile proximity to an urgent care. However, 30% of the SHAs do not have any medical facility within .5 miles. To provide additional insight into the degree of accessibility of medical facilities an analysis into each of the SHA’s travel distance to the medical facilities found that: i) 91% of the SHAs are within five miles of a hospital; ii) 82% of the SHAs are within a mile of a pharmacy; iii) 65% of the SHAs are within a mile of an urgent care. Lastly, the SHAs were ranked based on their relative measured degree of accessibility to the assessed amenities, which identified: seven SHAs with high accessibility to such amenities; seven SHAs with moderate accessibility; nine SHAs with low accessibility. It was found that the areas with the highest level of accessibility to amenities were located in the Downtown, Ballard, and U-District neighborhoods, while the ones with the lowest were located the furthest north, south, and in the Magnolia neighborhoods.