Creative People and Places Building Health Equity in Housing

Abstract

This report is the fourth in a series of reports exploring the role of law in housing equity and innovative uses of law to improve health equity through housing. The reports are based on extensive literature scans and semi-structured interviews with people who are taking action in housing policy and practice. The full series includes: Report I: A Vision of Health Equity in Housing; Report II: Legal Levers for Health Equity in Housing: A Systems Approach; Report III: Health Equity in Housing: Evidence and Evidence Gaps; Report IV: Creative People and Places Building Health Equity in Housing; Report V: Governing Health Equity in Housing; and Report VI: Health Equity through Housing: A Blueprint for Systematic Legal Action. This report explores ten themes identified through interviews with the people on the ground — the lawyers, researchers, civil rights advocates, community development executives, and affordable housing professionals — who are taking action to build health equity in housing in the US. After cataloging the evidence on the impact of legal levers in our third report, we wanted to learn what practitioners in the field and leading researchers thought about the use of legal levers for health equity in housing: what works, what doesn’t, and what might be tried next? Some of the themes that emerged from our conversations are: the interconnectedness of housing with other domains like transportation, community development and education; the failure of housing laws to protect vulnerable populations and eliminate segregation; and the need for better enforcement of useful levers and more resources to promote health equity in housing.