Research Specialist Karen Winter-Nelson Discusses Housing Research

By Meghan Dufresne, News Editor

Karen Winter-Nelson began working at the Building Research Council (BRC) in 1997. Since receiving a master’s degree in city planning in 1993, she has worked in various units at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. According to Winter-Nelson, her planning background has trained her to analyze data and recognize the implications of policy. Presently, she applies these skills to a range of research projects at the BRC.

For the past several months, Winter-Nelson has been working on a study of the operating costs of houses on American Indian reservations. The 18-month study, funded by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), is assessing the effect that geographic location has on residential maintenance and construction costs.

Currently available cost-estimating data is based only on urban housing projects and does not consider the remote location of many Indian reservations. The federal government is planning to recalibrate the distribution factor allotted to construction and maintenance projects on reservations based on the findings of this study.

Winter-Nelson, along with Professor James Anderson and Research Specialist Kate Brown, is working with 270 American Indian tribes. Currently, this study is in the first phase, which involves creating a questionnaire to collect construction and maintenance cost data. Once the survey is ready, the research team will visit a number of Indian reservations in order to gather detailed information from housing administrators.

This study is scheduled for completion in March 2006. Information about the research is being posted online at indianhousingcosts.org. The group believes that differences in operating costs might be attributed to a variety of factors, including freight charges, weather conditions, and the age of the unit.

Winter-Nelson previously worked on a national survey of the Section 202 Supportive Housing for the Elderly Program commissioned by the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP). The elder housing study was a follow-up to a study conducted 10 years previously. Her research revealed that elder housing is presently in great demand. In 1999, there were on average 9 elderly persons on waiting lists for Section 202 housing for each single vacancy in a given year. Demand was particularly high in large cities. The residents typically were older and more dependent than they had been in the past, yet conditions such as relatively small facility size and limited capital reserves limited the ability of existing facilities to adapt to growing resident needs.

Winter-Nelson also worked with Research Specialist Kate Brown in 2004 to help the State of Illinois with implementation of a new law, the Affordable Housing, Planning, and Appeal Act. With this act, communities with insufficient affordable housing are required to do an annual housing plan for the state in order to show that they are making progress towards affordable housing goals.

Housing research has long been central to the research agenda of the Building Research Council (formerly the Small Homes Council). Karen Winter-Nelson’s work reflects the preeminent position that the BRC maintains in the area of housing research. Through studies like these, research done at the University of Illinois helps to improve residential construction practices and individual lives across the United States.