The COVID-19 pandemic both highlighted eviction as a public health crisis and exacerbated the problem. In a new article published today in the New England Journal of Medicine, housing law experts at the Temple University Center for Public Health Law Research call for a realignment in how we think about and approach the housing crisis — and eviction in particular — in America.
Inspired by the "Legal Levers for Health Equity in Housing" report series published by the Center for Public Health Law Research, this webinar series explores the goal of health equity in housing through the lens of laws, policies, and other legal mechanisms to understand how those “levers” may support broad-reaching systems change to establish access to safe, affordable housing in richly diverse and supportive neighborhoods.
This article outlines 23 legal mechanisms, or levers, that may impact health equity in housing in the United States, and reviews the evidence base evaluating each lever.
The article introduces a model that divides the levers among five core domains intended to promote greater health equity in housing:
For public health, concerns about nuisance property ordinances are important, both because of the general importance of stable housing to personal and family health and because of the particularly severe consequences of eviction. Although other laws may protect the housing rights of domestic violence survivors, the fact that the main housing laws so rarely protect victims of domestic violence is concerning, purely on the level of legal doctrine and public policy.
Each week, the team from the Policies for Action Research Hub posts a summary of the latest news in housing equity and law. Visit the Harvard Petrie-Flom Center's Bill of Health Law to see all the weekly reviews.
