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In 2003 in Coal Run, a small hollow in southeastern Ohio, 89-year-old Helen McCuen still paid a ”water man” to fill a cistern buried in her front yard twice a month. Turning on a tap and getting fresh water wasn’t an option. McCuen lived in a largely African American part of town that lacked running water. The nearby city told residents it was too expensive to extend water lines to them. Meanwhile, a few miles away in a white neighborhood, water flowed freely. “The water stopped where the black folks started,” one local resident told the New York Times. It turned out that federal funds were used to extend water lines up to Coal Run but not to the African American community. A lawsuit would eventually force the city to lay water lines to the black residents.
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The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation recently released their updated Culture of Health measures, to track movement toward a nation where everyone, regardless of background or zip code, has a fair and just opportunity for health and well-being. Last year, we wrote about the measures on this blog, demonstrating alignment with Build Healthy Places Principles for Building Healthy and Prosperous Communities.
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Studies that connect green space to mental health and wellbeing abound. And this connection is intuitive—people have long retreated to parks and natural places to recharge from the pressures of daily life. Less known is the fact that greening is gaining recognition as an effective violence prevention strategy.
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Interested in developing a health strategy with partnerships outside of your own sector? On August 8, 2019, speakers from Build Healthy Places Network, The CaseMade, and NeighborWorks America drew on their varied experience bridging the health and community development sectors. We discussed entry points, the motivations and perspectives that community development and health sectors each bring to their work, shared goals across sectors, and successful strategies to make your case for partnership. Hear from:
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This article originally appeared on Enterprise’s blog on January 24, 2019. The Build Healthy Places Network is helping Enterprise to build healthcare partnerships with this initiative.
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This article originally appeared on the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s Economy Matters blog on January 3, 2019. As part of our Healthy Communities Initiative blog series, we highlight the role of regional Federal Reserve Banks in supporting and enabling cross-sector collaboration across the community development and health sectors.
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How do we know that affordable housing improves resident health? How can we document resident health improvement that results from a commitment to healthy housing? How do we measure
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The link between housing and health is far-reaching and complex. Historically, the housing-health nexus has been primarily associated with physical exposures and dilapidated housing; however, recent studies suggest that adverse health outcomes are also linked to housing rental assistance status, housing insecurity, a lack of affordable housing, and neighborhood quality.
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A community filled with multi-generational homes and businesses, traditions, and institutions reaching back over a century coupled with a quality of charm supports the impression that Old Brooklyn is an accessible and friendly place to call home. Built on civic pride and community engagement, it endured the urban decline of the 1970s and 80s coming into the new century as one of Cleveland’s most stable communities. However, that stability failed to show underlying realities of an aging population, deferred maintenance, and reduced investment.
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Since its inception in 1986, the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC)[1] has led to the construction or rehabilitation of over 2.8 million affordable housing units, making it the largest supplier of affordable housing in the U.S. Given the well-documented association between housing and health, the LIHTC thus provides a potential point of intervention for improving
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This article first appeared on the Urban Institute’s UrbanWire blog on July 20, 2017.
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“What ideas do people have for the BART plaza?” asked Scott Falcone, posing the question to a group of community members. Falcone, an independent development consultant to nonprofit affordable housing developer Mission Housing Development Corporation (MHDC), is referring to the community gathering space outside of the Balboa Park BART station, which will be redesigned in parallel with the Balboa Upper Yards affordable housing development. Community members responded and suggested “more trees and green space”, “space for cultural performances”, and “farmer’s markets!” All of these ideas contribute to the design of a healthier and more equitable neighborhood in the Outer Mission of San Francisco.
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[This cross-post originally appeared on Shelterforce magazine’s Rooflines blog.]
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A version of this article appeared in the GIH Bulletin on 5/17/2016.
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