National Housing Law Project Housing Law Bulletin

The link between inadequate housing and the health of America’s children is vividly underscored in a recent report issued jointly by physicians at Boston Medical Center and Housing America, a nonprofit organization that has launched a grass-roots effort to increase funding for affordable housing. The report, There’s No Place Like Home: How America’s Housing Crisis Threatens Our Children, relies upon recent data from several sources, including the American Housing Survey, HUD, the National Housing Trust and others. It catalogs the plight of millions of children from families that pay an inordinate proportion of their incomes for rent. Their situation results, in large part, from the continuing decline in the nation’s affordable housing stock involving the loss of nearly 1.5 million units since 1996.

The report describes losses to the affordable housing inventory from the principal federal programs serving the neediest families, including project-based Section 8, public housing and Section 8 vouchers, as well as unsubsidized housing units. For example, the report cites from National Housing Trust data the loss within two years of almost 100,000 project-based Section 8 units through owners’ prepayments or "opt-outs" of expiring contracts. Losses have occurred in nearly every state. For public housing, the ambitious HOPE VI program is cited as replacing less than half of the units demolished, with the resulting projected loss of 55,000 units by 2003. In the case of vouchers, HUD’s sample indicates a 34-percent increase in one year of families on Section 8 waiting lists nationwide.

The specific health challenges to children resulting from inadequate housing that were cited in the report include: asthma attacks due to cockroach infestation; anemia due to a family’s inability to afford both rent and food; house fires due to faulty electrical heating and substandard electrical equipment, overwhelmingly occuring in poor communities; burns from exposed home radiators; and lost IQ points among children ages 1 to 5 due to lead poisoning. Not surprisingly, the report points out the particular vulnerability of homeless children who have dramatically worse health problems than children from housed families. For example, children from homeless families have double the number of hospitalizations and almost double the respiratory infections, as well as high percentages of diarrheal infections and iron deficiency when compared to children who have housing.

The report urges the federal government action on five concrete steps to help families address their children’s housing-related health needs: (1) increased Section 8 vouchers, (2) preservation of the existing affordable housing stock, (3) increasing the low-income housing tax credit, (4) reserving $50 million in Section 8 certificates for families with children with severe asthma or chronic diseases, and (5) elimination of the shelter deduction cap used to determine food stamp eligibility but which, as presently set, fails to accommodate the housing costs of families living in high-rent areas.

The full report can be accessed through the following Website address:

http://www.igc.org/housingamerica.

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