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Health and Housing Funders’ Forum

Mission
The Health and Housing Funders’ Forum fosters collaboration among philanthropic organizations to make a significant impact in the areas of healthy housing and healthy communities and seeks to re-envision housing so that it leads to better health for vulnerable populations. Funders’ Forum members are ambassadors in their spheres of influence, creating a multidisciplinary ripple effect in areas such as health equity, sustainability, housing and community development, and public health. The Funders’ Forum is a non-dues-paying collaborative that provides its members with a range of opportunities, tools, and resources, such as webinars, peer networking, and conferences.

Background
The Health and Housing Funders’ Forum was founded by The Kresge Foundation and the National Center for Healthy Housing (NCHH) in 2009 to align philanthropic funding plans and priorities in the housing and health space. The idea for the Funders’ Forum originated at the 2009 National Healthy Housing Policy Summit, when several philanthropic organizations saw the value of partnering to advance investment in safe and healthy housing. A subsequent meeting in February 2010 united many of these leaders, and the group identified an action agenda for philanthropy.

Outcomes
The group identified the following four outcomes at an April 2012 in-person meeting:

  • A comprehensive healthy housing field of practice exists at the intersection of housing and health.
  • The healthy housing story is told in a compelling way to promote action across all sectors.
  • Investments in healthy housing are aligned to maximize funding.
  • A targeted healthy housing policy agenda is effective in promoting system-level change.

Get Involved
If you wish to learn more about the National Health and Housing Funders’ Forum, contact Michelle Harvey, NCHH’s Chief Operating Officer, at 443.539.4166.

Upcoming Events

There are currently no scheduled events.

If you have questions, comments, or suggestions for upcoming National Health and Housing Funders’ Forum webinars, contact Michelle Harvey, NCHH’s Chief Operating Officer, at 443.539.4166.

Past Events

Legal Frameworks for Lead and Healthy Housing: July 24, 2019.
Temple University will present information about legal strategies and approaches for increasing the supply of safe and healthy housing in the U.S.

  • Promoting healthy housing in healthy neighborhoods of opportunity, open to all, has been difficult in the U.S. Fifty years after the enactment of the Fair Housing Act, racial segregation remains a problem, and too many people pay more than they can afford or live with hazardous conditions. Law has played a role in creating these conditions, and it has many roles to play in alleviating them. To have a hope of real impact, law must be used in a systems-oriented, systematic, and evidence-guided way. This presentation will review what we know about the operation and effects of legal levers for health equity in housing, and offer thoughts on how foundations can promote the development and spread of healthy housing policies.

Financing Mechanisms for Lead Poisoning Prevention: May 31, 2019. 
The Green & Healthy Homes Initiative (GHHI) and Next Street will present on new research and tools that they’ve developed to help the field scale innovations around financing and funding lead remediation.

  • GHHI will highlight their new financing toolkit for cities, counties, states, and nonprofits to support lead poisoning prevention strategies and programs across the U.S. As a continually updated resource, the toolkit will serve as a guide to helping sites build a funding development plan in response to their goals and asset/gap analysis. The financing toolkit will be followed by an aligned policy toolkit in early summer. GHHI will unveil a full toolbox at their September Executive Leadership Institute and Peer Exchange training in Baltimore.
  • Next Street will share a portfolio of financing structures and mechanisms that can enable private investment from philanthropies, lenders, and others to flow into the remediation of lead in buildings and water service lines. The portfolio was developed based on a broad-based scan of activities and financing models in the housing, energy, water, and health sectors that can be adapted and scaled moving ahead. The entire report will be available publicly in the near future by the funder group that commissioned this work in late 2018.

Community Based Health Systems: September 21, 2016.
The Health and Housing Funders’ Forum hosted a panel of experts that spoke about two successful housing-based service models (HBSMs): one each in Vermont and Oregon, and their importance in addressing the social determinants of health, promoting population health, and advancing healthcare systems change.

According to a rigorous independent evaluation of Vermont’s Support and Services at Home (SASH) model by RTI and LeadingAge, the model is reducing the rate of growth in Medicare spending significantly while improving health and access to care. In Oregon, the Housing with Services model brought together a partnership of housing development organizations, the state’s largest Medicaid insurance provider, and several nonprofit social service agencies. A study completed by Enterprise Community Partners and the Center for Outcomes Research and Education (CORE) reports on Medicaid savings. More information about the SASH model is available from the National Well Home Network, an organization incubated at NCHH in 2017.

View the webinar recording from September 21, 2016.

Managing Gentrification: Preventing Displacement and Improving Health: December 1, 2015; March 16, 2016; and May 18, 2016.
The Health and Housing Funders’ Forum curated a three-part webinar series to explore the interconnectivity between gentrification, displacement, and health. There’s no doubt that our nation’s lowest-income communities are in need of investment. But how do you make sure that such investments benefit the residents in those communities? How do you ensure that you improve living conditions without pushing lower-income residents out of the community? How do you encourage new investment and development while maintaining housing stability and improving health for existing residents? The forum explored these questions and more over the course of three 90-minute webinars.

Resources