Example #1: Rolling Hills Apartments: Weaving Together Opportunities for Healthier Lives for a Diverse Immigrant Community
Twin Cities LISC, a local community development financial institution, has partnered with local organizations and city agencies to create quality affordable housing with improved healthcare access, including constructing a Federally Qualified Health Center. LISC also employed community health advocates to weave together the isolated health-related efforts in the neighborhood of focus into a cohesive health agenda. More specifically, they connect and help support existing efforts, identify and help address gaps, and facilitate the conversations and activities that sustain collaboration.
Learn how social determinants of health are being addressed to build healthier lives for immigrants in St. Paul, Minnesota in this Community Close-Up from the Building Healthy Places Network.
Contributed by Lia Thompson, University of Kansas, Community Tool Box Intern.
Example #2: Community Development 2.0—Collective Impact Focuses a Neighborhood Strategy for Health
The East Bay Asian Local Development Corporation (EBALDC) has built health into its strategic plan, and in the neighborhood revitalization work of The San Pablo Collaborative (SPARC), convened by EBALDC, health is the first priority. The San Pablo Area Revitalization Corridor neighborhood that stretches between downtown Oakland and Emeryville is considered to be one of the poorest and most disadvantaged areas of Oakland, California. Life expectancy in this area is up to 20 years lower than the neighboring area, Oakland Hills. SPARC works tirelessly to address the physical, social and economic factors-“social determinants”- that shape residents’ health in the San Pablo Avenue Corridor. SPARC partners work collectively in order to create an overall healthier environment for residents throughout the neighborhood. The California Hotel has been successfully preserved as affordable housing and a grocery store has been brought to this long abandoned neighborhood.
Learn how social determinants of health are being addressed to build healthier lives for the most disadvantaged areas of Oakland, California in this Community Close-Up from the Building Healthy Places Network.
Contributed by Lia Thompson, University of Kansas, Community Tool Box Intern.
Example #3: From Homelessness to Housing in San Francisco: Portraits and Oral History
As we build collaboration across sectors, storytelling and art that lifts up success stories become more and more important. A moving new multi-media art project called “Everyone Deserves a Home” on display in San Francisco’s Public Library asks 40 formally homeless residents in supportive housing, “what does home mean to you?”
Example #4: A Tour of Mariposa: Equitable Transit-Oriented Development
The Mariposa Project led by the Denver Housing Authority is an affordable and transit-oriented housing development in which health outcomes and community-level improvements are evaluated. The new mixed-income community has revitalized the surrounding areas, breaking down physical barriers between the public housing units and the rest of the community and infusing the area with community-informed retail and services. The Denver Housing Authority has transformed 10th Street into a promenade that connects the rail station to the nearby Art District on Santa Fe, drawing visitors from across the city to an area that was once overlooked.
Contributed by Lia Thompson, University of Kansas, Community Tool Box Intern.
Example #5: The Brandywine Center: In Pennsylvania, Wealthy County’s Poorer Residents Get A Healthy Place To Live
Although Chester County, Pennsylvania, has been considered one of the richest counties in the country, seven percent of its half-million residents live in poverty. Coatesville, a city of 13,000 people, is one such low-income pocket. To combat this problem, the Brandywine Health Foundation (BHF) constructed the Brandywine Center, a community hub. The four-story building houses health and dental services on the first floor, behavioral care on the fourth, and 24 units of affordable senior housing on the two middle floors. The BHF is committed to working toward both improved neighborhood conditions and improved health in this low-income community.
Contributed by Lia Thompson, University of Kansas, Community Tool Box Intern.
Example #6: Vita Health & Wellness District: Health at the Center of a Neighborhood Transformation
The Vita Health & Wellness District project was established through a partnership between the Stamford housing authority and Stamford hospital to revitalize an impoverished inner city area, in Stamford Connecticut, into a mixed-income community with expanded neighborhood services centered around a sustainable urban farm. Addressing the social determinants of health provide a framework for managing the neighborhood transformation in ways that would support and strengthen the existing community.
The Vita project is a great example of how a hospital can fulfill the Affordable Care Act’s mandate to engage its community by partnering to address the social determinants of health. The project also demonstrates how a forward-thinking community development organization can effectively partner with the health sector to pursue comprehensive community revitalization that could not have been achieved otherwise. These are still early days in what promises to be a fruitful and long-lasting partnership.
Read more about the Vita Health & Wellness District project on the Building Healthy Places Network blog.
Contributed by Lia Thompson, University of Kansas, Community Tool Box Intern.
Example #9: Supporting Childhood Wellness Through Healthy, Affordable Housing
In a low-income Philadelphia community, for-profit and non-profit developers have partnered to create Paseo Verde, a high-quality housing development highlighting resident and community health. The development prides itself on making healthy housing accessible even for families in poverty. This one-, two-, and three-bedroom apartment complex, Paseo Verde, supports children’s health through its environmentally sustainable design, on-site health center and pharmacy, resident service programs, and social service programs.
Read more in the profile from How Housing Matters.
Contributed by Lia Thompson, University of Kansas, Community Tool Box Intern.
Example #10: A Ride to Better Health
The Mariposa project is on the front lines of a rapidly growing movement seeking to reconnect low-income residents to the critical networks — transit, affordable housing, jobs — that are the cornerstones of opportunity. By centering development efforts around a transit stop, planners are hoping to reinvigorate a neighborhood by connecting its residents to integral supports and services, from hospitals to schools to grocery stores , all while paying heed to the risks of gentrification and displacement.
Example #11: Building Strong Neighborhoods with Affordable Housing
The New Settlement Apartments project began in 1990 with the acquisition and restoration of fifteen abandoned buildings, the construction of a new building, in addition to the acquisition of a seventeenth building to provide over 1,022 affordable homes for a community of more than 3,500 people, in which thirty percent are formerly homeless. Presently, the eighteenth building is under construction to provide sixty additional affordable apartments. This project has played a monumental role in transforming one of the worst areas of New York City into a vibrant mixed-income neighborhood.
Read more from the Settlement Housing Fund.
Contributed by Lia Thompson, University of Kansas, Community Tool Box Intern.