Housing Is helps broaden and deepen efforts to align housing, education, and health organizations to produce positive long-term outcomes for those experiencing poverty. Collaboration across systems and sectors—through shared goals, focused resources, and coordinated efforts—strengthens our collective ability to serve the needs of low-income individuals and families effectively and efficiently.
Public housing offers many low-income children, families, and seniors critical stability, but fragmented service delivery systems and siloed policymaking often fail to address social determinants of low-income individuals and families holistically. This often results in stagnant effectiveness and costly inefficiencies.
CLPHA leads the affordable housing industry as a convener of partners across sectors who are committed to aligning different systems and developing interdisciplinary programs to address a variety of essential needs in communities across the country. From promoting data sharing and shared accountability to encouraging cross-sector training and evidence-based interventions, our work fosters improved, sustained alignment and collaboration.
CLPHA’s Housing Is Initiative recognizes the key role public housing authorities can play in a variety of educational efforts benefiting both low-income children and adults. Research has shown that housing stability has a significant impact on children’s school performance and long-term outcomes, such as graduation rates and post-secondary activities. Housing authorities are actively exploring how they can align with and add value to local approaches that aim to improve educational outcomes.
Learn more about our education initiatives.
Public housing residents are not only economically disenfranchised, but also experience higher rates of chronic conditions and diagnoses such as heart disease, diabetes, asthma, and anxiety/depression. PHAs and their health partners can improve low-income people’s health and wellbeing by enhancing built environments, providing preventative health resources, and increasing access to healthcare services.
If you and your organization would like to learn how to join CLPHA in their cross-system efforts, please reach out to us at housingis@clpha.org, and join the Housing Is Clearinghouse at housingis.org.
The Housing Is Initiative is thankful to our foundation partners who make this cross-system work possible.
On December 20, 2017, the U.S. Congress passed the joint House-Senate conference committee agreement on HR 1, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. HR 1 is the most far-reaching tax reform legislation in over three decades. For affordable housing providers the bill fully preserves private...
HUD’s one-size-fits-all regulatory approach often inhibits PHAs from effectively tailoring federal programs to local community needs. PHAs have been successful when they are able to tailor their policies according their agency’s individual local goals, housing market conditions, and community priorities. This flexibility provides housing authorities the necessary tools to best serve their low-income residents. HUD should allow housing authorities to focus on innovation, ...
RAD was initially authorized with a unit cap of 60,000 in the FY12 appropriations bill, which has since been lifted to 455,000 in the FY18 appropriations bill. In order to meet the demand for RAD, CLPHA strongly supports eliminating the RAD cap.
On June 28 and 29, youth from the Housing Authority of the City of Pittsburgh (HACP) traveled to Washington, D.C. to meet up with District of Columbia Housing Authority (DCHA) youth for an educational field trip about Negro League Baseball and African American history and cultur
From the Chicago Sun-Times:
"When she was a little kid, Niesha Chism would sometimes pack a suitcase, heave it over the next-door neighbor’s fence and “run away” from home.
Some two decades later, Chism, now 33, sees her 2-year-old son head in the opposite direction — to the South Chicago home where she grew up.
That’s because Chism recently moved into the two-story brick Georgian right next door to the home where her parents still live.
From BISNOW Seattle:
"Last fall, Kōz Development founder and owner Cathy Reines jumped at the chance to partner with Tacoma Housing Authority to build affordable housing for University of Washington Tacoma students. The project gives students more housing stability as they shape their futures.
From the Seattle Times:
Some Seattleites who live in public housing will soon have access to free transit passes, a “life changer,” according to a representative for the city’s housing authority.
Mayor Jenny Durkan announced in February that her administration would offer about 1,500 Seattle Housing Authority (SHA) residents free unlimited ORCA passes. “Transit must be reliable and affordable because we need transit to meet our climate goals and because it makes people’s lives better,” the mayor said.
From SDHC's website:
The San Diego Housing Commission (SDHC) Achievement Academy is an example of an agency “performing in an outstanding manner or providing noteworthy community services,” according to a San Diego County Grand Jury report released today.
From the Victorville Daily Press:
A facility to permanently house chronically homeless persons and provide a variety of services to help get them off the streets is set to be completed in late summer, county officials said.
The Queens Motel on Stoddard Wells Road, more than 50 years old, dilapidated, unused and within sight of passing motorists on nearby Interstate 15, will be renovated into Desert Haven Apartments.
