Posted in Expert Insights
This blog originally appeared on Urban Institute’s Urban Wire blog.
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A growing number of public housing authorities are partnering with local schools to improve community outcomes for young children, because when children do better, communities do too.
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Interested in developing a health strategy with partnerships outside of your own sector? On August 8, 2019, speakers from Build Healthy Places Network, The CaseMade, and NeighborWorks America drew on their varied experience bridging the health and community development sectors. We discussed entry points, the motivations and perspectives that community development and health sectors each bring to their work, shared goals across sectors, and successful strategies to make your case for partnership. Hear from:
Read MorePosted in Network Commons
In early June, the Mixed-Income Strategic Alliance discussed Promoting Health Equity through Mixed-Income Communities (click to rewatch). This blog is a follow-up to that Network Commons event to address some of the lingering questions, particularly questions around inclusive social dynamics.
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This article was first published at Shelterforce, the original voice of community development.
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This article originally appeared on Enterprise’s blog on January 24, 2019. The Build Healthy Places Network is helping Enterprise to build healthcare partnerships with this initiative.
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How do we know that affordable housing improves resident health? How can we document resident health improvement that results from a commitment to healthy housing? How do we measure
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The link between housing and health is far-reaching and complex. Historically, the housing-health nexus has been primarily associated with physical exposures and dilapidated housing; however, recent studies suggest that adverse health outcomes are also linked to housing rental assistance status, housing insecurity, a lack of affordable housing, and neighborhood quality.
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Where we live – whether we have stable and safe housing, and the neighborhoods in which we live – can profoundly influence our health and important health behaviors, like physical activity. Unfortunately, approximately half of the adults in the United States do not engage in enough physical activity, putting them at a higher risk of many chronic conditions, including obesity, heart disease, and type 2 diabetes, and an increased risk of death.
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This article originally appeared on the Center for Community Investment’s blog on July 1, 2018.
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Ashland, CA, is a community in unincorporated Alameda County struggling from decades of disinvestment, high unemployment, and amongst the worst health indicators in the county. The numbers of reentry residents is amongst the highest in the county, further impacting the area’s stability and needs. Despite all this, the community has strong bones to build on.
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This article originally appeared on America’s Essential Hospitals’ Essential Insights blog on 12/4/17.
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Since its inception in 1986, the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC)[1] has led to the construction or rehabilitation of over 2.8 million affordable housing units, making it the largest supplier of affordable housing in the U.S. Given the well-documented association between housing and health, the LIHTC thus provides a potential point of intervention for improving
Read MorePosted in Community Close Ups
Trauma-Informed Community Building Sets Stage for Neighborhood Revitalization Susan Neufeld, Vice President of Resident Programs and Services for BRIDGE Housing Corporation (BRIDGE), describes the existing 606-unit Potrero Terrace and Annex housing projects as “an island of poverty in a sea of wealth.” Unlike many distressed public housing complexes that are surrounded by other disadvantaged neighborhoods, residents of Potrero Terrace and Annex, with a median annual income of $14,000, are surrounded by Potrero Hill neighbors making ten times that much.
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Tipping Point: Deep, Neighborhood-Scale Transformation Creates Lasting Change Of the East Lake Meadows public housing project before revitalization, says Carol Naughton of Purpose Built Communities, “the only thing that was working was the drug trade.” Frequently called “Little Vietnam” – as in, a war zone — the Atlanta neighborhood grappled with extreme poverty, violent crime, abysmal educational outcomes and high unemployment. The poorly built, 40-year-old public housing was in severe disrepair. For kids, East Lake Meadows functioned mostly as a pipeline into the Georgia penal system.
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Weaving Together Opportunities for Healthier Lives for a Diverse Immigrant Community “Wherever there is conflict in the world, a few years later you start to see that population showing up here,” says Andriana Abariotes, executive director of Twin Cities LISC (Local Initiatives Support Corporation). Minneapolis-St. Paul has a long history of welcoming immigrants and refugees from around the world and is home to many organizations serving these populations. St. Paul’s East Side, where LISC has worked for years, is home to a rich cultural mix of immigrants including Hmong, Somali, Karin, Bhutanese, Sudanese, Latinos and others, alongside Native and African Americans.
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Community Development 2.0—Collective Impact Focuses a Neighborhood Strategy for Health Not all community developers are aware that the work they’re doing has the potential to improve health, but the East Bay Asian Local Development Corporation (EBALDC) has built health into its strategic plan, and in the neighborhood revitalization work of the San Pablo Area Revitalization Collaborative (SPARC), convened by EBALDC, health is the first priority. The San Pablo Avenue Corridor neighborhood that stretches between downtown Oakland and nearby Emeryville is one of the poorest and most disadvantaged areas of Oakland, California. Here, life expectancy is up to 20 years lower than just a few miles away in the Oakland Hills.
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Holistic Redevelopment to Bring Lasting Change to a Distressed Neighborhood The St. Bernard Public Housing Development was already in severe disrepair and only 75 percent occupied on August 29, 2005, when Hurricane Katrina hit leaving much of the Bayou District neighborhood submerged in eight feet of water. One of four large public housing complexes in New Orleans, the St. Bernard was notorious for its blighted properties, rampant violence, drug activity, and severe poverty. Schools in the area were among the worst in New Orleans, a state whose schools regularly rank as low as 48th in the nation. Katrina rendered the housing complex uninhabitable, and many of the residents scattered as part of the Katrina diaspora.
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In Detroit, most of the investments in multi-family rental housing and small business development have been confined to the downtown area. However, in a Northwest Detroit neighborhood, the Winship Community, one catalytic project is proving to be transformational.
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This article first appeared on the Urban Institute’s UrbanWire blog on July 20, 2017.
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“What ideas do people have for the BART plaza?” asked Scott Falcone, posing the question to a group of community members. Falcone, an independent development consultant to nonprofit affordable housing developer Mission Housing Development Corporation (MHDC), is referring to the community gathering space outside of the Balboa Park BART station, which will be redesigned in parallel with the Balboa Upper Yards affordable housing development. Community members responded and suggested “more trees and green space”, “space for cultural performances”, and “farmer’s markets!” All of these ideas contribute to the design of a healthier and more equitable neighborhood in the Outer Mission of San Francisco.
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[This cross-post originally appeared on Shelterforce magazine’s Rooflines blog.]
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When you think of Boston what comes to mind? You may be thinking of American history, world class hospitals, top research institutions and winning sports teams. However, there is another side to Greater Boston, one where more than half of households are rent burdened (paying 30 percent or more of their income on rent) and income inequality is rising – in fact, a 2016 Brookings Institute report ranked Boston as #1 among cities with the highest income inequality nationally. While these statistics are daunting, Boston’s resources and leadership provide a prime opportunity for cross-sector innovation.
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As America ages, housing and community development allies work together to develop new choices for seniors. With creative models of long-term care and assisted living continuing to crop up, innovative aging-in-place programs offer an important alternative for many. The variety of options ensures that seniors with different levels of capability and dependence can live safely where they wish.
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Children’s hospitals in Ohio are making key investments to address a major cause of poor health — substandard housing.
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This blog reports back from the Housing + Health summit, mentioned in a recent Healthy Community Initiatives blog featuring the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
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As we build collaboration across sectors, storytelling and art that lifts up success stories become more and more important.
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This article first appeared on the Health Affairs blog on December 1, 2016.
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This blog originally appeared on the Home Matters blog in December 2016.
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Substandard housing has consequences on renters’ health and burdens the U.S. health care system, research shows. And the region served by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia is no exception.
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On a Friday afternoon, a 3-year-old girl sat quietly in my clinic with her parents. She wore a beautiful, dimpled smile and sported a purple dress with ruffles, her dark, curly hair pulled back in a tight ponytail. I opened a book and asked her about the pictures. She turned the pages with me, smiling, but said nothing. Her parents expressed concern that she still didn’t speak. They later shared with me that they were sleeping on the floor of a friend’s house, unable to find a place they could afford.
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Read the full Expert Insight series!
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This article first appeared on the Huffington Post blog September 2, 2016 and the Local Initiatives Support Corporation blog on September 5, 2016.
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As a
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Last summer, we introduced our magazine of stories illustrating the deep connections between neighborhood and health. Our first piece brought readers to two housing developments in Arizona designed for (and with) grandparents raising grandchildren.
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Our vision at the Build Healthy Places Network is that all communities should offer people the opportunity to live healthy, rewarding lives. To do that, we need to look more broadly at how health and community interact.
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We’re pleased to be kicking off a series of stories illustrating the deep connections between neighborhood and health. Over the next year, we’ll be visiting communities across the country who are doing innovative work at the intersection of health and community development and showcasing this workin Crosswalk, the network’s new publication on Medium.
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For many seniors, the thought of a nursing home is frightening—and dreaded. Assisted living communities can offer more autonomy, but often are out of reach financially because Medicare does not cover their services and Medicaid, the primary funder of long-term care, is limited in what it covers.
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The Ohio Housing Finance Agency (OHFA) has long recognized that housing is a powerful social determinant of health. Considerations of health and housing begin at the annual planning level, when research-based housing priorities are set, public-private partnerships are considered, and input from stakeholders forms the plan’s final draft.
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Colby Dailey, Managing Director of the Build Healthy Places Network, wrote a piece on the ShelterForce blog titled “Financial Incentives Encourage New Partnerships in Housing and Health”:
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