Housing Is Initiative


 
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
4.7.21
From ABC News 5 Cleveland: With Cleveland’s mass vaccine location opening at Cleveland State University’s Wolstein Center, tens of thousands of Ohioans will have the ability to get vaccinated over the next eight weeks. The site was chosen because it’s near public transportation but also because it’s relatively close to communities of color which are getting vaccinated at lower...
4.7.21
From DCist: Significant racial disparities persist in the vaccine rollout across the D.C. region, despite the fact that Black and Brown communities have borne the brunt of the coronavirus pandemic. Now, after months of navigating complex appointment systems and logistical hurdles, public health officials and community-led groups are trying to correct course on a vaccine distribution process...
4.7.21
From MySouthEnd.com: State Representative Jon Santiago partnered with Dr. Alister Martin, the South End Community Health Center, Mascon Medical, the Boston Housing Authority, Brewster Ambulance, and the Professional Firefighters of Massachusetts to set up pop-up COVID-19 vaccination clinics aimed at administering vaccinations to the most vulnerable and difficult to access populations in the...
4.7.21
From WMAR Baltimore: Dozens of people in Baltimore got vaccinated on Friday as the Housing Authority of Baltimore City brought the vaccine to Brooklyn Homes. They held a clinic for seniors and the disabled. The clinic is the latest in a series to bring vaccinations to housing authority properties. Organizers say doing so has helped overcome vaccine hesitancy.
3.18.21
CLPHA endorsed Congressman Adam Smith’s (D-Wash.) Ensuring a Long-Term Housing Recovery Act, which was introduced this week in the House of Representatives. The bill would utilize local Public Housing Authorities (PHAs) to provide rental assistance as the nation continues to address the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and economic recession.
Partner with Us

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.

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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