Housing is the cornerstone of community health and well-being. This statement is the central component of the Cornerstone Housing™ Initiative. Stable and accessible housing leads to better outcomes in education, health, employment, and more.
This assertion may seem obvious, especially when considering that the idea of “city-planning” began because of the public concern over the effects of poor housing on the broader community.1 However, is it also backed by research. The following update summarizes just a fragment of that research, demonstrating how housing impacts all other aspects of an individual or family’s life.
Use these findings in your next conversation about how important housing is to Central Florida’s prosperity. As you read these bullets, consider how your own housing situation influences your education, health and job access. And with your own experiences in mind, take in the system-wide implications of a housing crisis where teachers, mail carriers, nurses, and firefighters cannot afford to live in the communities they serve.2
The following bullets are direct quotes from three scholarly articles. Links to these articles can be found below. Note that some are only accessible behind paywalls. |
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1. Swope, Carolyn B., and Diana Hernández. “Housing as a determinant of health equity: A conceptual model.” Social Science & Medicine 243 (2019): 112571. Link to research. 2. Mueller, Elizabeth J., and J. Rosie Tighe. “Making the case for affordable housing: Connecting housing with health and education outcomes.” Journal of Planning Literature 21, no. 4 (2007): 371-385. Link to research. 3. Acolin, Arthur, and Susan Wachter. “Opportunity and housing access.” Cityscape 19, no. 1 (2017): 135-150. Link to research. |
Housing impact on education
When families are forced to move to find quality affordable housing, the change in children’s classrooms or school districts can have lasting impacts on their livelihoods.
• Low-income families move far more often than higher-income counterparts; 26 percent of households below the poverty line move each year compared to less than 12 percent of those above 150 percent of the poverty line (Swope and Hernández).
• Increased mobility as a child has long-ranging consequences. Children who changed schools four or more times by eighth grade were at least four times more likely to drop out than those who remained in the same school.… The connection between changing schools and high school graduation remain strong even after controlling for family characteristics. Several studies drawing on a national database of 10,000 high school students found that changing schools between first and eighth grade increase the odds of dropping out even after controlling for family characteristics and prior academic achievement (Mueller and Tighe).
Housing conditions also impact the long-term educational outcomes of residents.
• A prevalent coping strategy among low-income people to address high rent burdens is ‘doubling up’3 and overcrowding… For example, a study of low-income mothers in large cities found that almost 50 percent had doubled up at some point before their child was nine. Despite the financial benefits, overcrowding is associated with adverse health outcomes. Research has demonstrated its link to mental health outcomes, tuberculosis, behavioral issues such as hostility, and children’s educational outcomes (Swope and Hernández).
• A significant relationship [exists] between crowded housing situations and reduced rates of high school graduation. Crowding reduced the probability of completing high school by 11 percent in males and six percent in females (Mueller and Tighe).
Housing impact on health
The link between housing and health outcomes is strong and well documented. The following bullets capture only a small amount of the research in this area.
• Homeowners experiencing mortgage delinquency or foreclosure are at higher risk for adverse mental health outcomes, including psychological distress, anxiety, depression, substance use, and suicide (Swope and Hernández).
• Another major problem in substandard housing is poor air quality as a result of mold, pest infestation, and other toxins. Two studies – one in Britain and one in Canada – found that increased mold spore counts in the home were directly related to sickness (Mueller and Tighe).
• According to the National Institutes for Allergy and Infectious Disease, there are nearly 500,000 hospitalizations because of asthma each year, costing the U.S. economy over $10 billion in direct health costs and lost work days. Studies have shown that poorly maintained housing and neighborhoods with excessive air pollution can cause or exacerbate asthma symptoms (Mueller and Tighe).
Housing’s impact on opportunity
A lack of affordable housing options keeps people from moving to cities and neighborhoods with better opportunities. The research shows this was not always the case.
• Regions with employment opportunities are also experiencing rapid house price and rent appreciation. Unlike in the past, when convergence [of people to one place] was accompanied by an increase in the supply of housing in growing regions, house price increases now appear to be limiting the movement of workers to these areas of opportunity (Acolin and Wachter).
This is important because areas with high employment opportunities and high housing costs are also the areas where individuals have the highest chances of improving their standings economically.
• Areas with a higher level of intergenerational mobility have experienced higher housing cost growth and moderately higher employment growth. Therefore, the divergence in the location choices of lower-skilled, lower-income workers has consequences not only on their earnings and welfare, but also on their children’s social mobility. (Acolin and Wachter).
Housing impacts everything
Avoid the temptation to only imagine these dynamics affecting low-income households. While much of the research is focused on households that earn below a certain wage threshold, the broader takeaway is that housing impacts us all, both individually and collectively:
What does your own personal housing situation allow you to do or not do financially? What amenities are accessible to you based on the neighborhood you live in; does this determine how far you travel to the grocery store or doctors’ office? What does stable and consistent housing mean to your family?
Once we consider our own livelihoods, the certainty of housing’s impact is clear. The academic research points out what we already know—that housing impacts nearly all areas of our lives from education and health to employment and a child’s chances of future success. The implications of this go beyond a single individual or family’s life. Access to housing is the main building block of entire regions and the cornerstone of community health and well-being.
Get engaged
If you wish to become a delegate of this work, please email Phoebe Fleming, director of research and learning.
Learn more at FaceTheHousingCrisis.org.
[1] Mueller, Elizabeth J., and J. Rosie Tighe. “Making the case for affordable housing: Connecting housing with health and education outcomes.” Journal of Planning Literature 21, no. 4 (2007): 371-385.
[3] Doubling up has many nuanced definitions depending on the study. Most inclusively, it means the presence of any adult who is not the householder or householder’s partner. Often doubling up involves multiple families or sub-families living together. See this paper on the challenges of measuring double-up homelessness for more.
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