The health of individuals and the health of communities are linked in so many ways, from zoning to access to fresh food, safe housing, safe streets and parks, and proper medical care. How is this growing realization affecting practice for both community development organizations and health care organizations? What does it take for these two separate worlds to partner toward shared goals? Thanks to the 
What Happens When a CDC Pivots to a Health-First Focus?
Old Brooklyn Community Development Corporation in Cleveland finds that being an early adopter of a community health focus has its advantages.
Condemning Asthma, Not Homes in North Carolina
An apartment complex in North Carolina generated 120 times as many hospital visits as would have been expected for its population, until a creative coalition forced its sale and worked with the new owner to change things.
Transforming Vacant Land Into Community Assets
Vacant land activities can be low cost and high impact; the price of failure is not steep, but the return on investment can be high.
Greening Vacant Lots: Low Cost, Big Effect in Philly
A Philadelphia program is cleaning up abandoned lots, helping formerly incarcerated residents get jobs, and improving the overall health and well-being of neighborhoods.
The Mission: End Childhood Lead Poisoning in Rochester
In the 1990s, Rochester, New York, had an alarmingly large number of children who had elevated lead levels in their blood. Decades later, the rate has decreased by 85 percent. This is how a local coalition made it happen.
Fall 2018 — Health and Community Development Supplement
In our third supplement, we focus on a coalition's work to lower the number of asthma-related hospital visits from an apartment complex, and how sitting on a porch can be good for your health. Click on the photo to download a copy.
Seniors Cannot Age in Place Without Access to Oral Health Services
Maintaining good health—including good oral health—as long as possible is a critical component of aging in place.
Shelter Shorts, The Week in Community Development—Oct. 12
News from—and affecting—the community development world. This week: fast food swamps, Seattle has too many apartments, criminal justice, basic income pilot, more.
The Right to Stay Put
There is much work to be done around housing and equitable development, but the solution is not simply to move people around. A key challenge is creating real choice.
Sitting on a Porch Can Be Good for Your Health
To help combat isolation and reweave the connecting fabric that had been lost, a neighborhood arts center launches an initiative that eventually became a movement.
Shelter Shorts, The Week in Community Development—Sept. 21
News from—and affecting—the community development world.
Is a Home with Lead Hazards Really “Affordable”?
The cost of housing is not simply the mortgage, rent, and utilities, but the individual and community health, education, and social costs associated with low-quality, unstable, and unhealthy housing.
Setting Aside Housing for Frequent Health Care Users
Housing specifically for those who frequently use health care services makes sense on many levels, but it also raises questions about privacy and lining up who pays and who benefits.
Loneliness Kills; Community Developers Can Help
Some social determinants of health are concrete and physical. A substandard house with mold and pests, for example, will lead to more asthma and...
How a Health Impact Assessment Helped House Irish Travellers
An HIA that focused on Irish Traveller housing programs proves successful because it empowered the population.
A Bad Mix: Utility Shut-Offs and Chronic Illnesses
In most states, a household can avoid or delay termination of its utility service due to overdue balances if the shut-off would significantly impact their health. But the process isn’t as simple as it may seem
Smaller Cities Are Laboratories for Change
In smaller cities it is typically much easier to engage high levels of leadership, get traction for strategies that are more visible, engage the wider community, build trust, and scale solutions more quickly than in larger areas. Here are a few examples.
California’s Endless Housing “Crisis”
In many ways, the recognition of the current “crisis” stems from middle- and upper-income Californians finally being impacted, and using their power to push for solutions that would address their situation. But their solutions ignore another population.
Getting Ahead of Gentrification in the South Side of Columbus
More than a decade after several groups came together to improve substandard housing in the South Side of Columbus, signs of gentrification and forced displacement are beginning to emerge. Can something be done so current residents can afford to stay in their neighborhoods for years to come? The short answer is yes.
The Real Limits of Imaginary Lines
We can’t truly understand how a person’s health is affected by where they live if we look only at data within arbitrary boundaries like census tracts and ignore the places people actually go and don’t go every day.
Getting Health on Board
It’s becoming increasingly common for community development corporations and grassroots housing organizations to have board members from the health care sector. Here's why.
When Domestic Violence and Utility Bill Debt Intersect
In Pennsylvania, domestic violence survivors are often not afforded the protections they are entitled to because many people are often unaware of the Responsible Utility Customer Protection Act and its provisions. A three-year pilot program aimed to change that.
Shelter Shorts—The Week in Community Development, April 27
Climate Gentrification | A Marijuana Tax for Housing? | Homeownership Alone Can't Close the Wealth Gap | Illegal ICE Raids on Farms | Keeping An Eye on Opportunity Zones | More...
Shelter Shorts—The Week in Community Development, April 20
NIMBYs, YIMBYs, PHIMBYs-Oh My! | Can Algorithms Make Equitable Cities? | Retail Segregation Takes a Toll | E.R. Visits and "Tough" Neighborhoods | Enough Innovation Already | More...
A Marketplace for Health and Housing to Exchange Money—Has the Time Come?
Why would there be a need for a marketplace that values health? The answer is simple: our current “investments” in health are not working.
Shelter Shorts—The Week in Community Development, April 6
Gentrification Is Bad For One's Health | Housing Teachers-At School | Protecting Space for Local Business | TOD Doesn't Have to Displace | Community Artists Win in Court | More . . .
Where Were All the Sidewalks Built?
A health and community development partnership leads to a revelation for a city transportation department.
Tools of the Trade: Measuring the Health-Related Returns of Community Development
Partnerships are becoming more the norm and less the exception, but how do we know that they are actually having a good effect on health, well-being, and economic opportunity?
Why Do We Care About Health Equity?
The fight for health equity—for everyone to have a roughly equal shot at the potential and choice that good health offers—is of course, similar to the fight for economic justice and the work of community development.
Not Just Partners, But Neighbors: Health Care in Affordable Housing Developments
Offering on-site health care in housing developments makes sense. But developing and managing housing and health care facilities can be very different. How do you make them work together?
Using Art to Create Community at a Clinic
Arts projects at a Minneapolis clinic created a natural connection between people who might not otherwise interact.
Organizing for Hospital Community Benefits
Community development corporations need to become more educated about hospital community benefits. This is what can be done to get the process started.
Reshaping Housing Policy with a Health Lens
In Georgia, public health practitioners used a Health Impact Assessment to suggest changes to the allocation plan for Low-Income Housing Tax Credits. This is how they made it happen.
Interview with Mark D. Constantine, president and CEO of Richmond Memorial Health Foundation
Mark Constantine gives us a view of one foundation’s attempt to learn to walk the walk and how that commitment can influence the work one organization does to create a culture of health in its community.
Financial Metrics Won’t Tell the Full Picture
Cost savings alone do not measure the full value of the collaboration between the health care and housing sectors.
Aligning Health Systems With Community Development
Hospitals and health systems can’t solve societal challenges alone. But they can play a key role in mobilizing and aligning joint resources to bring positive changes to low-income communities.
Why Health and Housing Partnerships Are Hard
Housing managers and health providers are natural partners for health care programming, but misunderstandings and institutional mismatches can get in the way.
Q: Can Supporting Community Development Improve Outcomes for the Health Sector?
Yes! Over 50 percent of premature deaths in the U.S. can be attributed to preventable non-medical factors, specifically behavioral, environmental, and social conditions.
Approaching Partnerships Between Health Care Institutions and Community Development Organizations
There isn’t an exact science to forming partnerships. The slow and sometimes messy process requires patience, allies, and trust.
Moving Hospital and Health System Investments Upstream
Across the country, nonprofit hospitals are under intense scrutiny due to the discrepancy between the substantial revenues they generate compared to the level of...
Walking Warriors
When it comes to neighborhood-based health activity interventions, how they are carried out is often as important as what is offered.
How This Museum Supports Community Integration and Trauma Recovery
Using artistic expression to de-stigmatize and treat trauma.
Why Food-Oriented Development Is Easier to Implement
You’ve heard of transit-oriented development. But food-oriented development might be easier to generate.
Rowhouse Repairs for Health in Philadelphia
In Philadelphia, health care professionals and housing advocates are working together to deliver home repairs to low-income homeowners.
How Organizing for Justice Helps Your Mental Health
How do social justice, organizing, and mental health interact? Shelterforce chats with clinical social worker Dawn Belkin Martinez to find out.
Which Agencies Should Pay to End Family Homelessness?
When families have stable housing, the benefits are widespread. And perhaps that has been the problem.
Housing Is Health: Ballot Initiatives in California Approved
A conversation with three county supervisors who were instrumental in moving affordable housing ballot measures forward in the California Bay Area by bringing in the health factor.
Bridging Divides with Peer-to-Peer Strategies in Public Housing
Peer-to-peer strategies in public housing can keep residents engaged in programs offered within their respective communities by addressing cultural divides, trust issues, and employment barriers.
How a Risk-Averse Hospital and a Risk-Taking CDC Built a Functional Partnership
Shelterforce recently spoke with Angela Mingo of Nationwide Children’s Hospital and the Rev. John Edgar of Community Development for All People to learn more about their health/housing partnership and how it came to be.
Look Outside the Box with Health and Housing Partnerships
Though it seems the connection between health and community development is on everyone’s lips these days, the two sectors are really still at the beginning stages of learning how to work together.
A New Responsibility for Children’s Hospitals: The Health of Neighborhoods
Children’s hospitals in Ohio are making key investments to address a major cause of poor health — substandard housing.
To Save On Medi-Cal Costs, a Bid to Help Homeless Patients With Rent Money
California lawmakers consider devoting an additional $90 million to subsidize rent for homeless patients.
Doctors Join the Fight Against Speculators
Housing crises are health crises. Toxic mold causes asthma. Lack of heat weakens immune systems. Unaffordability causes stress. Forced choices between paying the rent and paying for medical care or food lead to poor health. Around the country, health care institutions that recognize this have started to employ lawyers onsite to help patients fight landlords for better housing conditions or qualify for housing subsidies (plus a range of other legal supports that will generally have direct effect on their health).
A Look at a Medical, Legal Aid Partnership in New Orleans
A health center has partnered with a legal services agency to better help patients by addressing the social determinants of health. This “medical-legal partnership” is part of a growing trend that’s taking place across the nation.
Creating a Sanctuary For Youth in Camden, New Jersey
At Hopeworks ‘N Camden, youth have often experienced a lifetime of traumatic events and toxic stress. Learning from the health world’s understanding of trauma can create better outcomes for service organizations—and better workplaces too.
The Specter of Asbestos in Low-Income Housing
The cost of lead and asbestos abatement totals in the thousands of dollars, and private homes aren’t usually included in asbestos regulation, so its removal becomes less of a priority for landlords, and is much less likely to happen at all.
Seven Tips to Help You Forge Health and Housing Partnerships
About 80 percent of a person’s health status can be attributed to non-medical factors such as housing and income.
Urban Institute Report Highlights Health and Housing Links
There have been many studies, reports, and articles throughout the years that highlight the correlation between a person's housing...
Under One Roof: Health Care and Social Services in the Same Place
Without steady employment, Olivia and her son found themselves without housing, without food, without healthcare, and without options. It...
Community Building Despite Trauma
The trauma caused by poverty and the systems that reinforce it can short-circuit standard efforts to build community. A new method called “trauma-informed community building” aims to change that.
Developing Economic, Along with Physical, Health
Sue Joss and Jason Barbosa might seem to be unlikely economic development partners. She is the veteran CEO of a major nonprofit health care...
The Next Step in Supportive Housing
With the passage of the Affordable Care Act, individual-focused healthy lifestyles—regardless of socioeconomic status—became an increased topic of discussion. Along with clear correlations between...
How the Community Reinvestment Act Can Help Flint
The audacious and callous decisions leading to the tragedy in Flint, Michigan are cruel and beyond comprehension. What is needed is an all-out effort...
Flint: Tainted Choices, Tainted Water
Like the water itself, the situation in Flint, Mich., should be crystal clear: elected and appointed officials, at the state and federal levels, have done...
Health Care Confronts Challenge to Shift from “Volume to Value”
Health care, as we all know, is a big business. U.S. hospitals alone have $782 billion in total annual expenditures, which is roughly five...
Filling Commercial Vacancies with Food Pantries
When I tell people that food pantries can be a new and innovative way to help lift up communities, they look at me as...
Can San Francisco Get Mixed-Income Public Housing Redevelopment Right?
The HOPE SF program is aiming to explicitly avoid many of the problems mixed-income public housing redevelopments have faced, to create a truly inclusive process.
Common Sense Is Community Development’s Most Powerful Ally
The title of this post proved itself to be true for us in Duluth, when local organizations got together to address the growing need...
How *to* Connect Health and Community Development
A recent Rooflines post explored how not to connect community development and health, urging practitioners to not fall into the trap of “moralizing public...
How *Not* to Connect Health and Community Development
A few months ago as I walked to a board meeting of my local CDFI, I passed a memorial to a young man who...
Cooking With Health, and Heritage, in Mind
A recent article in The New York Times discussed an initiative to bring fresh, healthy food to a low-income Bronx neighborhood in New York’s...
Staying Ahead of the Age Wave
Groups working with older adults, including many community developers, are crafting a range of creative interventions, from home modifications to service-enriched housing models, to allow seniors to age in place. Will it be enough?
Renovating Senior Complexes to Be Green, Healthy, and Connected
Orness Plaza is one of the only public housing developments geared toward seniors and the disabled in Mankato, Minn., the state’s fourth largest city....
Leaving Grandma Out in the Cold
The demise of the federal program that funded senior housing construction bodes ill for the increasing numbers of low-income seniors who struggle to afford a decent place to live.
Keeping Seniors Healthy by Fostering Connections and Community
For high needs seniors with chronic illnesses, health is not merely—or even mostly—a matter for medical professionals.
Financial Incentives Encourage New Partnerships in Housing and Health
If you watch Downton Abbey, as I do, you know that Lord Grantham is becoming an affordable housing developer—much to his consternation. He’s been called on to help build a slate of new homes on a piece of his property in the wake of The Great War. But it was his answer to a question […]
Making the Connections Between Housing and Health
In December, President Barack Obama signed into law the Senator Paul Simon Water for the World Act that offers health, and dignity to millions of people through access to life-saving water and sanitation. The focus of this legislation will not cost taxpayers a penny more; it simply makes U.S. investment in existing programs smarter, more […]
Foreclosures Are Making People Sick
[Editor's note: Shelterforce continues to discuss the connection between health and housing, and most recently devoted an entire issue to the topic. The op-ed below originally appeared in American Banker on November 3, 2014.] While foreclosure activity has declined since the peak of the mortgage crisis, millions of families are still at risk of losing […]
Forget Red and Blue States: Go Green for Better Jobs, Health, and Environment
The following op-ed is an expanded version of “Green States Better for Jobs,” that appeared in the Louisville Courier Journal on October 20, 2014. How do you win an election in any red Southern state? If you are running as a senator the conventional wisdom is you condemn government as an enemy of working families […]
Hubs Help Move the Local Food Movement to the Next Level
It’s not unusual to read a press release from a governor’s or mayor’s office celebrating a deal to bring a new company to a neighborhood or city. Typically we’d be talking about a new manufacturing or tech firm, and the press release would speak glowingly of the prospects for economic development. Which makes a bit […]
Hey Housers, Health Folks Want to Talk to You Too!
People in the affordable housing field have grown increasingly interested in talking about healthcare. Concepts like “housing as a platform” for health outcomes have become part of our professional lexicon and panel topics at our conferences. We talk a lot about the barriers to progress in aligning health and housing policy in this country. […]
In Schools, Eliminating Poverty Stigma Could End Child Hunger
More Americans live in high-poverty neighborhoods than ever before, according to a recent Century Foundation report, and many of...
A Farm-to-Fork Movement, Starting with the Corner Store
One of the more intriguing aspects of the local food movement in the United States is the effort to...
From Food Pantries to Food Justice
Is it possible for a family to be truly self-sufficient and provide all of its own food?This is a...
Our Financial Reform, Our Health
The Price of Inequality: How Today's Divided Society Endangers Our Future, by Joseph Stiglitz, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., June 2012. 448 pp. $27.95 (Hardcover). Available on Amazon.
Community Development: It’s What’s For Dinner
Last week we heard from Alan Mallach and Mindy Thompson Fullilove on different aspects of stable neighborhoods.
Mallach, in his post, looks at some of...
The Tenacity of Dysfunction
The word resilience has different meanings in different fields. In the field of material science, it refers to the ability of a material to...
Done Right, Eliminating Food Deserts Result in Community Oases
While eliminating food deserts often involves resources from outside of the community, a neighborhood must maintain control of its assets and identity.
Prescription for a Legal Advocate
When we wrote in 2006 about Boston Medical Center's program to link patients to lawyers who could help improve their...
Health and Housing: Where Should the Money Come From?
When we published our focus issue on health and housing and neighborhoods, one of the themes that came up in...
Health and the Spaces Inbetween
Last year, we published a focus issue on health and community development. We called the package “Are Our Neighborhoods...
The Affordable Care Act: Implications for Community Development
Even if you have not tuned out of the long-running debate about the future of health care in the United States, you can be...
Healthy Futures Fund to Connect Health and Housing Practitioners
Building affordable housing with integrated health services. Health centers in low-income neighborhoods.These are goals of a $100M investment fund.
Are Planners Responsible for Public Health?
Could planners have an effect on waistlines around the Beltway? Maryland’s Prince George’s County and Virginia’s Fairfax County are examining how land use and...
Webinar: Are Our Neighborhoods Making Us Sick?
Inadequate housing conditions—the presence of lead, radon, water leaks, poor ventilation, pollution or mold—are linked to poor health. But research also shows that even...
Community Development and New Understandings of Health and Wellness
In June 2012, I attended the Institute for the Future’s Health Horizons conference Innovating Information Ecosystems: The Next Decade and Beyond as an expert...
Breathing Easier
A Massachusetts-based program provides home environment assessments, education, and home remediation services—often resulting in the improved health and lives of families.
Unsorting Our Cities
To improve the health of residents of disadvantaged neighborhoods, we have to address inequality, not medical care.
California’s New Environmental Movement
How communities of color, using health and jobs as rallying cries, took on Big Oil -- and won!
The Intersection of Health Philanthropy and Housing
Health philanthropy and community development have historically worked on separate tracks. That’s changing.