Housing

Low-income housing assistance programs represent a potentially powerful policy lever to promote population health and reduce health disparities. Yet, research on the impact of federal low-income housing programs on health outcomes remains highly limited, and no study to date has adequately explored whether the monetary value of housing assistance has an impact on health outcomes.

The built environment and housing have pronounced effects on community health. This study will look at the reach of Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) programs and their potential to produce healthier rental housing that serves low-income and vulnerable populations. The research will focus on four research questions:

In late 2015, the Vancouver Housing Authority (VHA) initiated a new policy experiment for distributing Section 8 housing vouchers. Rather than using basic income eligibility requirements, vouchers would be deliberately deployed to maximize their impact on community health by targeting those with complex medical needs and homeless families with school-age children. The central question this study seeks to answer is whether targeting specific subpopulations to prioritize Section 8 housing vouchers can increase the total impact of those vouchers on key community health indicators.

Law stands as a significant influence on health equity, and an essential means of advancing a Culture of Health characterized by an equitable distribution of well-being. This project combines applied research and translation activities to answer a series of questions designed to improve our understanding and implementation of law and policy to address health inequity through housing

Surprisingly little is known about how housing policy and neighborhood features impact health. This project will examine several housing policies in New York City­ that may affect health, and develop a measure to understand the real-time impact of housing policy on health outcomes.

Federal housing assistance benefits 11 million people through three main programs: public housing, project-based Section 8 housing, and housing choice vouchers. Researchers use multiple datasets to examine the effects of federal housing assistance programs on food security, health-promoting behaviors, and health outcomes.

This series of case studies identifies and describes several emerging and promising interventions that sit at the intersection of housing and health across the country. Interventions reflect a variety of approaches and models from a diversity of communities and will span both the public and private sectors.