Earlier this year, Prosperity Now gathered several housing partners with a request: join us as we explore the intersection of health and housing through a series of Peer Learning Calls. We wanted to connect with organizations seeking to expand upon the housing services that they offered. These services can include things such as looking to build healthy homes, connecting place-based health services with health outcomes, or connecting housing to community health outcomes. Our hypothesis was that housing organizations deal with more than just housing issues. Therefore, they can become health champions to help their communities thrive. Thus, from the first call, we asked big picture questions: in relation to health and housing, what are some of the primary issues that you see in the communities that you serve? How do you think that these issues can best be addressed? What services would your community benefit from the most? What are some obstacles, and how can we remove them? 

We chose a diverse group of housing organizations because we recognize that within the social determinants of health (SDOH), housing is often a bucket that is looked at as just shelter. Our group quickly came to the consensus that housing was more than just “a roof over one’s head,” and should be expanded to include affordability, safety, stability, quality and more. This resonates with research across the health and housing field. 

Additionally, the group noted that while the SDOH are often tied to individual health outcomes, housing is also tied to community health, and creating healthy communities requires a more comprehensive look to include economic stability, neighborhood environment, education, food and the health care system. In an exercise we conducted with them, the cohort was tasked with re-envisioning the social determinants of health from a housing perspective. We were impressed with the depth that housing organizations cover and the intricacies of the relationships they have within their communities. One of our cohort members said, “Through our discussions and through viewing the SDOH models of the other participants, I was able to more clearly focus my own model and how we plan to proceed as we move toward a more active partnership with the health community. These discussions also helped me to see the argument for support that would most fully align with the needs and goals of that community.”  

Through this cohort, we developed an intersectional framework for our Health and Housing work to help partners develop tailored approaches and center their communities in this work. This includes a set of mutual principles to ground the work, which include health outcomes encompassed in strategic program design, community-based housing organizations as the main doers, and an intentional focus on low-income households and communities of color to address disparities. We also believe this kind of work requires an adaptation of several frameworks: an intersectoral collaboration, human-centered design, asset-based community development and economic development. This unified framework can help health and housing fields intersect and achieve outcomes around a shared agenda. 

In working with this cohort, we realized that partnerships with the health field sometimes are viewed merely as opportunities to gain access to more funding. While many believed these partnerships were a one-way street, in reality, community-based health organizations are able to provide more than just funding and could become greater partners in the housing space. From these calls, a member said their understanding of the intersection of health and housing was “clarified through this work. Before, my arguments were too broad and wordy. I feel I can now do an elevator speech to open the door to a potential partnership.” Lastly, we are pleased that all organizations reported that they will continue to advance their health and housing outcomes. Many will search for partners in the health field, such as health providers, insurers and research organizations, to build on their communities’ health. 

The global pandemic has shown how important housing is to health outcomes. Like many practitioners in this intersection, we continue to explore the health and housing nexus. We hope to see further development around the social determinants of health and innovative programming and partnerships at the local level. Many thanks to our cohort members who continued to engage in the midst of the most unpredictable year.