Center Goal #3 - Documenting and Strengthening the Connections Between Affordable Housing and Key Social Objectives  

The Center works to identify the important connections between stable, affordable housing and other social objectives, such as improved health, stronger educational outcomes, reduced crime, and community and economic development.  Through this work, the Center seeks to expand the base of support for affordable housing and to develop housing policies that more effectively achieve key social objectives.

In July 2007, the Center, in partnership with Enterprise Community Partners, released Vital Links: Housing's Contributions to the Nation's Health and Education Objectives (July 2007). This set of resources frames the many ways in which our homes and neighborhoods may affect health outcomes and educational achievement, and includes a research summary, literature review, annotated bibliography, and fact sheet for each topic.

HousingPolicy.org, the Center's new online guide to state and local housing policy, documents additional ways in which housing matters on the site's Connections page.  Topics addressed include housing's role in: improving standards of living for working families; improving livability and reducing sprawl; and reducing energy use and improving the environment.

What happens when low- to moderate-income working families have to pay an excessive amount of their income for housing? Clearly, Something’s Gotta Give (April 2005), as the Center shows in an in-depth report with that title that examines how unaffordable housing affects other aspects of our quality of life.  This study found that families who pay more than half of their household budget for housing often reduce expenditures for other essentials such as food, clothing, transportation and healthcare.  But by far, their biggest tradeoff is for transportation, a finding that prompted the Center to more closely study tradeoffs between housing and transportation costs as documented in the study, A Heavy Load: The Combined Housing and Transportation Burdens of Working Families  (October 2006).


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