Housing as a Platform for Health and Equity: Evidence and Future Directions

Abstract

The links between housing and health are now known to be strong and multifaceted and to generally span across 4 key pillars: stability, affordability, quality and safety, and neighborhood opportunity. Housing disparities in the United States are tenaciously patterned along axes of social inequality and contribute to the burden related to persistently adverse health outcomes in affected groups. Appreciating the multidimensional relationship between housing and health is critical in moving the housing and health agenda forward to inspire greater equity.We assessed the current state of research on housing and health disparities, and we share recommendations for achieving opportunities for health equity centered on a comprehensive framing of housing.Despite the vastness of existing research, we must contextualize the housing and health disparities nexus in a broader web of interrelated variables emerging from the same roots of structural inequalities. There is more we can do to maximize the extent to which existing research furthers our understanding of housing's relationship to health and potential related interventions; however, there are also several areas where new research is warranted.