Power, Housing Justice and Health Equity Primer
AUTHORS
Human Impact Partners
Right to the City Alliance
OVERVIEW
This primer explores how building community power helps address housing inequities and improve health.
We define key concepts including: community power and dimensions of power, and illustrates those concepts with case studies, examples, and recommendations from the housing justice field.
Research goals
Describe key concepts including housing justice, community power, dimensions of power, and health equity as they relate to the field of housing justice
Increase understanding of why health and housing advocates need to address the distribution of power as a root cause of the housing crisis
Profile examples and impacts of community power building work by housing justice organizers in collaboration with others, like health agencies and CDFIs
Identify recommendations for organizations wanting to ally with the housing justice movement
Key Findings
Everyone has a role to play in advancing housing justice, yet community power building must be at the center of decision-making processes to transform our inequitable housing systems.
Five interrelated Just Housing Principles — community control, affordability, inclusivity, permanence, and health and sustainability — can be used to analyze whether current or alternative housing models successfully provide affordable and dignified homes for all.
The Three Faces (or Dimensions) of Power is a useful framework for understanding how power can be built and used over time to advance or inhibit equitable policies.
Across the nation, despite historical and current inequities, dozens of communities most impacted by housing (and social) inequities are successfully organizing to build community power and take back decision-making power over conditions impacting their lives.
Read the primer
How Building Community Power Can Help Address Housing Inequities and Improve Health
By Human Impact Partners and Right to the City Alliance