Why is housing important for health?

Inadequate and poor-quality housing contributes to health problems, such as chronic diseases and injuries, and can have detrimental effects on child development. There are several aspects of housing that affect health, such as affordability, stability, quality and security, and the surrounding neighborhood. 1 This summary will discuss the quality of housing, specifically the physical quality of the Home Care in Fenwick Island DE and the conditions of the neighborhood. In this summary, “home” is used as an integral term to include all the different types of Home Care in Fenwick Island DE, such as single-family homes and apartments. Housing quality refers to the physical conditions of a person's home, as well as the quality of the social and physical environment in which the home is located, 2,3 Poor quality housing is associated with several negative health outcomes, 3—6.Poor housing conditions are associated with a wide range of health problems, including respiratory infections, asthma, lead poisoning, injuries, and mental health. Addressing housing issues offers public health professionals an opportunity to address an important social determinant of health.

Public health has long been involved in housing issues. In the 19th century, health officials focused on poor sanitation, overcrowding, and inadequate ventilation to reduce infectious diseases, as well as fire hazards to decrease injuries. Today, public health departments can employ multiple strategies to improve housing, such as developing and enforcing housing guidelines and codes, implementing “healthy home” programs to improve indoor environmental quality, evaluating housing conditions, and advocating for healthy housing and affordable. Now is the time for public health to create healthier homes by tackling poor housing.

Improving housing conditions can save lives, reduce diseases, increase quality of life, reduce poverty, help mitigate climate change and contribute to the achievement of a series of Sustainable Development Goals, in particular those that address health (SDGs) and sustainable cities (SDG 1). Housing is, therefore, an important starting point for intersectoral public health programs and primary prevention. Public health has a long (though intermittent) history of participation in the housing field, and this participation is generally accepted by other housing stakeholders (e.g., this is part of a three-part series on how housing, economic stability, and public space create health).The scarcity of affordable housing limits families' and individuals' choices about where to live, and often relegates low-income families to poor housing in unsafe, overpopulated neighborhoods, with higher rates of poverty and fewer resources for health promotion (for example, improving affordable homeownership leads to numerous outcomes that go beyond housing and encompass areas ranging from community participation to education). For both variables, there is a significant correlation for households without children, but not for those with children, which is perhaps counterintuitive.

This research attempts to examine potential causal pathways between the less tangible aspects of the housing experience and health and well-being outcomes. People tend to be healthier when they have economic stability, live in quality housing, and have access to safe and connected public spaces and communities. The New York City Department of Health has a supportive housing program that offers 11,200 permanent and affordable housing units for people diagnosed with substance use or mental health who are at risk of homelessness. This is particularly true considering the markedly different opportunities that leasing agents and community-based housing associations have to allow tenants to choose the area they are in or to make changes to the area in which their properties are located. Federal funding is now provided to state and local health departments to determine the extent of childhood lead poisoning, test children for high levels of lead in the blood, help ensure that babies and children poisoned with lead receive medical and environmental monitoring, develop neighborhood-based initiatives to prevent childhood lead poisoning and safely remove lead from homes. For example, excessive noise (common in poorly insulated homes) has been associated with lack of sleep, causing psychological stress and activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis and the sympathetic nervous system.

The only exception to this is general satisfaction with the housing organization, since this variable is not available in the first wave. However, variations in the level of significance of the correlations between the hypotheses suggest that it is the experience of housing and housing service in relation to the tenant's previous experiences, and not the current housing or service experience itself, that can predict improvements in health and well-being. Many renters didn't have a “housing organization” in Wave 1, because they were homeless or living with friends or family. The findings provide a realistic theoretical framework based on empirical data on the causal pathways that connect the less tangible aspects of the housing experience to health and well-being...