WHY HOUSING MATTERS

Housing instability — including frequent moves, overcrowding, and the threat of eviction or foreclosure — creates stress, depression and hopelessness for far too many families.

Families paying too high a percentage of their income for housing often find themselves making impossible choices. Rent or health care? Food or transportation?

Adults living in housing that they struggle to afford often describe themselves as less healthy, and the well-being and development of millions of children is compromised by living in insecure housing.

Children and adults in substandard housing suffer more often from asthma and breathing conditions caused by exposure to mold and toxic chemicals.

In their own homes, these families suffer fewer chronic respiratory problems. A decent and affordable place to live helps families by freeing them from such physical and mental hardships and placing them on a path of new opportunity and increased confidence and self-reliance.

As homeownership goes up in a neighborhood, crime goes down. Putting down roots, renovating property and investing in communities also helps entire neighborhoods grow and become safer for everyone. Neighborhoods where residents stay put for a long time tend to be associated with lower crime rates.

Habitat homes are located in safe neighborhoods. For some, a Habitat home includes something they have never had before: a front door that locks and the sense of security that comes with it. For some parents, it is the first time they let their kids play outside without fearing for their safety.

For others, moving into a new home they have helped build or making much-needed repairs to their existing home can address hazards they have had to live with for too long. The estimated direct and indirect health care cost of illnesses and injuries caused by inadequate housing conditions is in the tens of billions of dollars, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Healthy Homes Initiative.

A Habitat home is the stepping-stone to a bigger life plan for many of our families. They’ve put sweat-equity into building their own home and conquered financial-planning courses with us, bringing more self-confidence and a sense of achievement. Once in a stable home, they often find more time and energy to better their future through education, training or a job change.

Surveys of Habitat homeowners and their families show better financial health, parents who are more confident about meeting their family’s needs, and even improved grades for their children.

Studies show that strong and stable households are foundational to child development and growth. A family’s partnership with Habitat means they have a stable place to live and to spend time together. When a home fosters — instead of hinders — health and safety, families can flourish. Owning an affordable home also allows homeowners to lift up their entire family by saving for their futures and investing in educational opportunities — bolstering job opportunities and long-term career growth.

Children living in family-owned homes tend to repeat their experience. They assume someday they will be homeowners. It breaks the cycle of poverty and replaces it with a new expectation that gets passed down over generations.

Homeownership can transform lives. It creates long-lasting and life-changing impact on families and communities, from providing a source of wealth and asset-building to influencing health and educational outcomes and contributing to positive community
development. The first step in bringing homeownership to more families, however, is to understand who currently has access to homeownership and what factors play a role.

Improving affordable homeownership leads to numerous outcomes that extend beyond the house, such as greater economic stability, access to quality education, increased civic and social engagement, better health, and a reduced environmental footprint. This evidence brief provides an overview of how families can prosper with greater access to decent, affordable housing.

Low-income households and households of color have limited access to homeownership because of barriers such as limited supply of affordable housing, restricted access to credit, and systemic inequities. For those low-income households and households of color, homeownership can be a catalyst to wealth building. Home equity accounts for over half their net wealth, but these gains from homeownership vary by income, gender and race/ethnicity.

Black and Hispanic/Latino households face unique barriers to homeownership that prevent access to the beneficial outcomes associated with homeownership, such as wealth building, improved health and higher educational attainment. Historically, structural and institutional obstacles faced by racial and ethnic minorities compounded over time to produce these inequities.

Social determinants of health are factors that encompass how people are born, grow, live, work and age and that affect their health outcomes. The social determinants of health include aspects that range from socioeconomic status to the neighborhood and physical environment and are recognized by multiple health care and other organizations as necessary for improving overall health and reducing health disparities. According to research by the CDC, people with low incomes and communities of color tend to reside in places with more health risks — greater exposure to health hazards within the home and the community, such as lead, mold and toxic pollutants — and face housing cost burdens that encourage housing instability, which can jeopardize the ability to meet their basic needs.

The location and condition of a child’s house plays a significant role in their physical, cognitive and emotional development and well-being, which impacts their education through improved attendance, better cognitive and behavioral health, and improved academic achievement. Making direct connections between housing and its impact on children’s education is challenging. However, studies have drawn a pathway between owning a decent, affordable and stable home and experiencing positive educational outcomes.