Danya Keene, Associate Professor, Public Health, Yale University
Title: The Affordable Rental Housing Crisis and Population Health Equity
Abstract: The US is facing a severe shortage of affordable rental housing that contributes to multiple forms of housing insecurity including homelessness, crowded and poor-quality housing conditions, unstable housing arrangements, and cost burdens, all of which adversely affect health. In this presentation, I will first discuss the broad framework that guides our work at Yale’s Housing and Health Equity Lab. Across our projects, we consider these multiple forms of housing insecurity as manifestations of structural racism that not only affect the health of housing insecure individuals, but also the health of the networks and communities in which these individuals live. In the second part of the presentation, I will discuss current housing policies and their potential to advance housing access and improve individual and population health equity. Third, I will focus in on one policy: federal rental assistance. Rental assistance, provided in the form of rental vouchers and project-based housing, is a primary source of affordable housing for low-income households in an increasingly unaffordable rental market. However, due to supply constraints, fewer than 1 in 4 eligible households receive this assistance. This shortage presents a policy opportunity to expand housing access. It also provides a research opportunity to study the impacts of housing on health in a quasi-experimental framework. I will share results from a mixed-methods study that examines the impacts of rental assistance access on type 2 diabetes management and outcomes. Our analyses that compare rent-assisted individuals with a pseudo waitlist control group provide strong evidence that a shortage of rental assistance has health costs. Our qualitative work supports these findings, demonstrating numerous processes through which access to rental assistance (and waiting for it) shapes health behaviors, stress exposure, and health outcomes. Ultimately, this project (and our lab’s work more generally), strives to produce evidence and frameworks that can be used by advocates and policy makers to advance housing practices and policies that reduce housing insecurity and its health equity impacts.
Faculty, staff, and students interested in meeting with Dr. Keene can sign up online.
