Through both anecdotal and data-driven evidence, panelists at the “How Housing Matters”conference provided further insight into the pivotal role that housing plays in people’s lives. The conference was held in Washington, D.C., as part of a partnership among the National Building Museum, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Office of Policy Development and Research at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and the National Housing Conference.
“We all know that housing shapes our worldview and shapes our communities. And, sadly, we also know that—especially in times of crisis—housing is not a top priority in policies and budget allocations,” noted Julia Stasch, interim president of the MacArthur Foundation. In an era of tight budgets, “governments of all levels will have to learn the programs with the greatest return on investment.”
How Housing Matters Profiles: Tacoma Housing Authority and School District | Paseo Verde, Philadelphia | Beacon Partners project in Richmond, Virginia
Speakers throughout the day, spanning the housing, education, and health sectors, concurred that transformative investments often come from housing. In HUD Secretary Julián Castro’s terminology, HUD is “the department of opportunity” because “whether it’s owning their home or living in a rental unit, that can be the starting point for fantastic opportunities in their lives.”
While the focus of the day was on education, child well-being, and successful aging, Secretary Castro also highlighted HUD’s ongoing Disaster Resilience Competition, for which applications are due in March 2015. Through the competition, the department encourages communities to “take a holistic view of becoming more resilient in housing” and get prepared.
“The world knows how to house people when it wants to,” said Michael Mirra, executive director of the Tacoma Housing Authority (THA). To get more than just housing from its subsidy dollars, the THA started the Education Project, which pairs housing subsidies with school improvements and a requirement for parents to both stay in place and keep their kids in the local school. The coordinated school improvement and housing stability program is the THA’s attempt to stop the cycle of letting one set of families “escape” from undesirable areas only to be replaced by a new group moving in from the shelter.
The approach is promising, yet it leaves open questions about whether the children who stay during the school’s upswing would be better served there or by moving out to schools of proven quality. While the panel included many voices, such as UpSpring Education Group’s president, Jean-Claude Brizard, who expressed support for neighborhood stability and the value of schools as local anchors, Barbara Sard’s friendly dissent showed that the debate is far from over.
The two health panels—one focused on children and the other on aging—offered consensus about housing’s central role, yet a mix of questions and answers about how to fund cost-saving interventions.
On the “Healthy Housing, Healthy Kids” panel, Elizabeth Baca, a pediatrician and senior health adviser in the California Governor’s Office of Planning and Research, recounted the importance of the built environment in public health initiatives targeting ailments from asthma to obesity. According to Rebecca Levine Coley, a professor at Boston College, green space as small as a single tree has recently been proved to generate health benefits.
Using the built environment to influence health is nothing new to Jonathan Rose, a member of the national advisory board of the ULI Terwilliger Center for Housing. As the president of Jonathan Rose Companies, he witnessed his Paseo Verde development in Philadelphia earn the nation’s first LEED-ND platinum rating for its extensive green features, which also support residents’ health.
“Form follows finance in real estate,” according to Rose. Due to low-income housing tax credit limits, the development team had to layer in new markets tax credits. This led to a more deeply mixed-use project with a federally qualified health center as one of the tenants. While supporting residents’ health needs and potentially reducing health care costs, Rose points out that “health clinics have the economics that allow them to pay market rents.” Rose’s developments also incorporate health-supporting materials, including nontoxic paints and insulation that doubles as a cockroach deterrent, at no additional cost.
“Grab bars don’t kill but throw rugs do” was the recurring theme of the “Successful Housing, Successful Aging” panel. Professor Michael Eriksen of Texas Tech University showed compelling data on the financial returns of investing in home modifications. In the United States, $34 billion per year is currently spent on medical care due to serious falls. Eriksen’s research found that each dollar spent on home modifications for older adults yields $1.03 to $2.26 in medical cost savings every two years. But with the costs and savings affecting different pockets, Jennifer Ho of HUD asked, “How do we use the cost data to get more grab bars?”
While more work is needed to align costs and savings, the appetite for dialogue and collaboration at the conference suggested that the elusive nut will get cracked before long. According to Paul Weech of the Housing Partnership Network, alignment will take policy change. In the meantime, his network offers tools to help small developers achieve economies of scale that make innovative thinking financially possible.
Maya Brennan is Vice President, Housing, of the ULI Terwilliger Center for Housing. Ms. Brennan joined ULI in 2014 and leads the center’s research and evaluation projects and coordinates a diverse set of activities related to housing policy and practice.
