Housing Is Initiative


 

We Envision... Celebrating 10 Years of CLPHA's Housing Is Initiative

In 2024 the Housing Is Initiative is celebrating our tenth anniversary. To mark this milestone, we are releasing We Envision..., a comprehensive report reflecting on the Initiative's accomplishments and looking towards the future of cross-sector partnerships that improve life outcomes.

 

Read the Report

 
CLPHA’s Housing Is Initiative helps build a future where systems work together to improve life outcomes for low-income people.

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.

Our Work
Housing Is Education:

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. 

 

Housing Is Health:

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.

 

Learn more about our health initiatives.

 

Housing Is Digital Equity:

As our world’s reliance on technology continues to grow, achieving digital equity and bridging the digital divide for disadvantaged populations becomes more and more critical. The digital divide disproportionately affects low-income households and contributes to racial inequities that have long plagued Black, Indigenous, or people of color (BIPOC) communities. PHAs are uniquely well-positioned to help advance digital equity given that they house and provide services to some of our nation’s lowest-income and most disconnected families. 

 

Learn more about our digital equity initiatives.

Housing Is-Related News
9.12.19
From the New Haven Register: The Elm City Communities/Housing Authority of New Haven holds its annual "Back to School Fair" at Clinton School in New Haven, Conn., on Tuesday August 6, 2019. In addition to new school supplies and activities for the kids like face painting and snacks, families were able to access resources for education and health services.
9.12.19
From Pew Stateline: After her daughter died from lupus, Charlene Green was left caring for her two grandchildren. But their housing situation was precarious at best: mold and mildew everywhere, ceiling caving in. To get her landlord to make much-needed repairs in their Washington, D.C., apartment, the 62-year-old withheld rent — only to be threatened with eviction.
9.12.19
From Cincinnati CityBeat: Connie Benton has lived at Findlater Gardens for the last 18 years. She likes the sense of community among most of the residents in the 600 townhomes owned and run by the Cincinnati Metropolitan Housing Authority in Winton Hills, about eight miles north of downtown Cincinnati.  But her family has also experienced violence here, and some of her relatives...
9.12.19
From the Chicago Tribune: Let’s dispense with the obvious, shall we? Three new Chicago buildings, which combine public libraries and public housing, are head and shoulders above the Robert Taylor Homes, Cabrini-Green and the rest of the city’s dehumanizing, now-demolished public housing projects.
9.12.19
From the Urban Institute: Altgeld Gardens, a Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) development, is an isolated community on the far south side of the city and is home to nearly 1,500 families. But it doesn’t have a single grocery store.
9.12.19
From the Boston Globe: Rafael Salas, an incoming freshman at Westfield State University, dreams of the day when he can help his family leave public housing. In middle school, when he began attending a youth development program run through the Cambridge Housing Authority, Salas said he already knew his place in society: a “low-income black man.”
Partner with Us

If you and your organization would like to learn how to join us in cross-system efforts, please reach out to us at housingis@clpha.org, and join the Housing Is Clearinghouse at housingis.org.

Special Thanks

The Housing Is Initiative is thankful to our foundation partners who make this cross-system work possible. 

Click here to learn more about our funders.

Learn more about the Housing Is Initiative at housingis.org

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