Legal Levers for Health Equity in Housing: A Systems Approach

Abstract

This report is the second in a series of reports exploring the role of law in housing equity and innovative uses of law to improve health equity through housing. The reports are based on extensive literature scans and semi-structured interviews with people who are taking action in housing policy and practice. The full series includes: Report I: A Vision of Health Equity in Housing; Report II: Legal Levers for Health Equity in Housing: A Systems Approach; Report III: Health Equity in Housing: Evidence and Evidence Gaps; Report IV: Creative People and Places Building Health Equity in Housing; Report V: Governing Health Equity in Housing; and Report VI: Health Equity through Housing: A Blueprint for Systematic Legal Action.

This report describes some of the factors that make housing in the U.S. a complex system, and establishes a model of the key legal elements, or “levers,” in that system. The model helps people from many backgrounds include law in a systematic approach to promote greater health equity in housing. Our model aims to pull together the key factors that are often separately identified and worked on, and organizes the legal levers we identified into five domains: Increasing the Supply of New Affordable Housing; Maintaining Existing Housing as Affordable, Stable, and Safe; Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing; Enhancing Economic Choice for the Poor; and Governance.

Keywords: housing, health equity, law

JEL Classification: I18, K30, R21, R28, R31, R38