Health Equity in Housing: Evidence and Evidence Gaps

Abstract

This report is the third 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 outlines what we know and don’t know about the impacts of 30 legal levers, and how they are influencing health equity in housing. It takes a “cold-eyed view” to wipe the slate of misconceptions and unwarranted confidence in existing legal levers, to help us better structure future efforts as the experiments they are. This report reviews not only the existing evidence for the levers, but clearly outlines the lingering questions we still have about how these legal levers are impacting health — setting the stage for our recommendations coming in a later report.