Pandemic Exacerbates Stress for Struggling Houston Families

Amelyn Ng, an architect fellow, conducted a study called “Stay-at-home Stress,” documenting the pandemic’s effects on households through interviews with residents from one of the low-income neighborhoods. Ng worked with the Center for Urban Transformation, a community-based organization in the Fifth Ward, to get in contact with volunteer residents who experienced stress during the pandemic. She and Rice Architecture graduate students Carrie Li and Carolyn Francis identified stressors in homes that required urgent mitigation, which stressors could be alleviated through spatial reorganization and which would likely persist beyond the pandemic. The study includes context maps, spatial survey and interviews, and the researcher created a stress factor matrix.