Cityscape Examines the Housing-Health Connection

The latest issue of Cityscape: A Journal of Policy Development and Research, guest edited by Veronica Helms Garrison and Craig Evan Pollack, is titled "The Housing-Health Connection" and features a symposium on the complex interplay between housing and health outcomes.

In their introduction, Garrison and Pollack present an overview of the issue's research and findings. The symposium articles fall into three main groups: investigations into the health outcomes of specific housing interventions; examinations of state and local programs promoting housing as an aspect of health; and presentations of emerging evidence illuminating connections between health and housing.

Amy Kandilov, Vince Keyes, Martijn van Hasselt, Alisha Sanders, Noëlle Siegfried, Robyn Stone, Patrick Edwards, Aubrey Collins, and Jenna Brophy analyze the effectiveness of Vermont's Support and Services at Home (SASH) program in reducing Medicare expenditures among program participants, finding favorable results in some cases.

Amy L. Freeman, Tianying Li, Sue A. Kaplan, Ingrid Gould Ellen, Ashley Young, Diane Rubin, Marc N. Gourevitch, and Kelly M. Doran examine the implementation of a community health worker (CHW) program in two subsidized housing developments and find residents report improved well-being and high satisfaction with the CHW program.

Kirstin Frescoln, Mai Thi Nguyen, William M. Rohe, and Michael D. Webb use a mix of survey, interview, and household-level administrative data to assess the impact of a work requirement on residents' overall well-being, revealing a range of positive and negative outcomes where work requirements are implemented alongside a case management program.

Anna Bailey, Peggy Bailey, and Douglas Rice investigate 19 state and local rental assistance programs to evaluate the role they play in advancing health outcomes for target populations.

Stephany De Scisciolo, Krista Egger, and Mary Ayala present a pilot study that followed five community development corporations (CDCs) in their efforts to create Health Action Plans, which may help CDCs better prioritize health during the development process.

Stephen Lucas assesses the partnerships large public housing authorities make with public health entities and community-based social service providers, revealing a wide variety of engagement levels and commonplace limitations in funding, staffing, and data sharing.

Danya E. Keene, Mariana Henry, Carina Gormley, and Chima Ndumele demonstrate through a qualitative, interview-based approach that access to rental assistance is associated with improved diabetes self-management.

Diana B. Cutts, Allison Bovell-Ammon, Stephanie Ettinger de Cuba, Richard Sheward, Meg Shaefer, Cassie Huang, Maureen M. Black, Patrick H. Casey, Sharon Coleman, Megan Sandel, and Deborah A. Frank show that homelessness during infancy is correlated with higher developmental risks for children and higher odds of poor mental and physical health for mothers.

Cathy L. Antonakos and Natalie Colabianchi investigate the influence of housing vouchers on modifiable health risk factors and behaviors, identifying short-term, but not long-term, increases in rates of smoking and obesity.

Kyungsoon Wang and Dan Immergluck observe significant association between neighborhood long-term vacancy and neighborhood health problems in adults, with variation in outcomes differentiated by the growth trajectory of the metropolitan area.

This issue also features two refereed papers. In "Employment and Earnings Trajectories During Two Decades Among Adults in New York City Homeless Shelters," Stephen Metraux, Jamison D. Fargo, Nicholas Eng, and Dennis P. Culhane examine aggregated earnings and shelter-use data for 160,525 sheltered adults over a twenty year period. The authors relate the dynamics of employment and homelessness to entry to and exit from the New York City shelter system. Susan G. Mason and Kenneth P. Thomas, in their article "Exploring Patterns of Tax Increment Financing Use and Structural Explanations in Missouri's Major Metropolitan Regions," compare the use of tax increment financing (TIF) in St. Louis and Kansas City to investigate how different TIF usage strategies by central cities yield different outcomes in their respective suburbs.

Articles in this issue's regularly appearing departments include "The Long-Term Dynamics of Affordable Rental Housing: Creating and Using a New Database," by John C. Weicher, Frederick J. Eggers, and Fouad Moumen in Data Shop; "Continuous Repayment Structures in Japanese Housing Finance for Elderly People: Applications To Mitigate Counterparty Risk Through U.S. Reverse Mortgage Design," by Christopher Feather, and "Creating Permanent Housing Affordability: Lessons From German Cooperative Housing Models," by Kathryn Reynolds in Foreign Exchange; and "Understanding and Enhancing the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's ZIP Code Crosswalk Files," by Ron Wilson and Alexander Din in SpAM.