42-Page Report: The Next Generation of Healthy Communities.



Your MesaZona blogger is thrilled there's a one-hour webinar to help understand a somewhat dry and academic forty-two pages of dense language - the infographics are great!

Please join PolicyLink and The Kresge Foundation for a discussion of the post-recession housing challenges facing households in America, and the housing policy priorities that can address racial equity, health, climate, and economic opportunity outcomes.

Thu, May 5, 2016 10:30 AM - 11:30 AM MST
Go to register for this webinar right here
In release of the groundbreaking new report
Healthy Communities of Opportunity:
An Equity Blueprint
to Address America’s Housing Challenges, the webinar will feature David Fukuzawa from The Kresge Foundation, Kalima Rose and Teddy Kỳ-Nam Miller from PolicyLink and other national leaders focused on the next generation of healthy communities.

Equity Is...

Equity is just and fair inclusion into a society in which all can participate, prosper, and reach their full potential.

Healthy Communities of Opportunity: 
An Equity Blueprint to Address America’s Housing Challenges
Kalima Rose Teddy Kỳ-Nam Miller

Contents
  1 Preface
  2 Introduction
  5 The Relationship between Health and Housing in American Urban Policy
 10 National Housing Trends and Their Implications  for Health
 17 Connecting Opportunity, Health, and Housing Policy: Promising Movements in the Field
 26 A Policy Framework to Advance Equity in  Health and Housing
 30 Conclusion

Preface
At the intersection of housing, health, and economic security lie enormous possibilities to build communities of opportunity across America. Housing and health are inextricably linked. Their complex interplay determines whether neighborhoods, cities, and regions flourish or fall behind, and whether children thrive and families succeed.



Weaving together smart housing, health, and economic security policy can create stronger, resilient, inclusive, prosperous communities. 
It has long been obvious that a lead-laden home or a house located by a toxic dump impacts health. The implications of a house far from fresh food or a safe place to exercise can also seem apparent. Less understood are other factors. For example, paying more than half of one’s salary for a home, living in crowded conditions to save on rent, the tension and worry of being in and out of homelessness or in high-crime environments all take a toll. So, too, does living in a community isolated from jobs, job-connecting networks, and reliable public transportation. As this report reveals, housing, health, and economic security together shape the opportunity landscape in America, which in turn are shaped by the nation’s structural, economic, and  racial barriers.

The Kresge Foundation and PolicyLink embarked on this project to lift up fresh ideas, new collaborations, groundbreaking strategies, and the many opportunities for united action and policy change to advance healthy housing. Across America, grassroots leaders, policymakers, philanthropists, community builders, and advocates are addressing health and housing concurrently, comprehensively, and creatively with promising results. The work connects health and housing across the spectrum—from disinvested communities of concentrated poverty, to the rapidly changing neighborhoods where longtime residents live under the shadow of displacement, to  the high-opportunity communities with quality schools  and services. 
Housing is an important issue for many community stakeholders, but it’s a central concern for public health policymakers, fair housing supporters, and civil rights leaders. This report illuminates opportunities for these groups to bring together their varied perspectives to answer one of the most pressing questions facing the nation: how to fix the nation’s mounting health and housing problems. By working together, leaders, advocates, and local residents can rebuild communities on a foundation of equity—just and fair inclusion into a society in which all can participate, prosper, and reach their full potential. 
Our organizations began this project against the backdrop of the Great Recession’s worst financial catastrophe in generations, one that hit people of color first and worst, causing a loss of wealth of historic proportions from which they have yet to recover. The reconfigured housing landscape that has emerged in the wake of the collapse has deepened inequity. 
This paper offers a roadmap to face these challenges and secure the nation’s future. The Obama Administration’s new Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule, Affordable Care  Act investments in health promotion, the recent Supreme Court victory for advocates challenging exclusionary housing  policies, the deepening engagement of philanthropy, the growing demand for investments that improve sustainability and climate resiliency, and robust organizing by communities—all this adds up to the best opportunity in years to transform the nation’s housing infrastructure into an engine of health, opportunity, and prosperity for all.
Let’s work across disciplines to advance the foundational housing changes this country urgently needs to make our communities healthy. We hope this report spurs your thinking, inspires your imagination, and points the way to new partnerships, effective advocacy, and transformative action
.
Angela Glover Blackwell President and CEO PolicyLink

David Fukuzawa Managing Director of Health and Human Services Programs The Kresge Foundation

Conclusion
The links between health and housing inequities are unmistakable, and the challenges faced by vulnerable communities struggling to afford housing in opportunity-rich communities undermine our public health and collective prosperity.
Prioritizing low-income communities and communities of color to receive new housing investments as a platform for expanding opportunity and improving health outcomes will secure our nation’s prosperous future.
Despite challenging circumstances, there is much to build on.
Millions of Americans have new access to health coverage. The ACA has unleashed new homelessness prevention strategies tied to healthy housing.
Advocates achieved a pivotal victory when the Supreme Court recently preserved the use of disparate impact to challenge exclusionary housing policies. From the newly released Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule; the rise of robust tenants’ rights networks; the growing attention to sustainability and resilience; to new philanthropic and community development investment pools—together these provide a strong platform for integrated planning across housing, transportation, education, and economic sectors.
Absent comprehensive and bold investment in our nation’s housing infrastructure, the inequities in access to affordable, healthy housing will continue to grow.
As policymakers turn their attention to this rising national crisis, it is imperative that plans and strategies mirror the scale of the challenge and are anchored in equity: just and fair inclusion for all.
PolicyLink is a national research and action institute advancing economic and social equity by  Lifting Up What Works®. policylink.org
The Kresge Foundation is a $3.6 billion private, national foundation that works to expand opportunities in America’s cities through grantmaking and social investing in arts and culture, education, environment, health, human services, and community development in Detroit. kresge.org