Affording Housing at the Expense of Health

Abstract

Low-income families often simultaneously encounter housing and neighborhood problems pertaining to safety, affordability, and quality issues that necessitate strategies to maximize limited budgets and ensure safety. Such constrained decisions regarding inadequate housing and poor neighborhood conditions, however, may themselves create or exacerbate health risks. Building on the survival strategies literature, this article offers rich and detailed accounts of coping and management strategies on the part of vulnerable families facing housing and neighborhood hardships. The findings are based on in-depth interviews with 72 respondents and ethnographic observations in an urban community. The results illustrate how low-income women avoid neighborhood danger by relegating family life to the home environment, thereby increasing exposure to health risks such as stress, depression, and asthma. The discussion focuses on public health literature linking housing and health and proposes the use of legal strategies and community engagement as resources to complement current approaches to housing and neighborhood problems.

Understanding ‘energy insecurity’ and why it matters to health

“…Set within the larger context of neighborhood disadvantage, factors such as racial residential segregation, concentrated poverty, limited social cohesion and deficient institutions produce a backdrop of structural challenges with direct implications for the availability of a decent housing stock. Unsafe neighborhood conditions also amplify the salience of the home environment as people stay home more often to avoid violence and danger (Hernández, 2016a,b). As an additional layer of disadvantage, housing marked by deficiencies in quality and lacking modern efficiencies affect the conditions of the home environment and the costs associated with its operation (i.e.…”

“…The key dimensions of energy insecurity emerged using an adapted grounded theory approach in a qualitative study originally conducted to explore broad housing problems among low-income families (Hernández, 2016a; 2016b). The present analysis focused on energy as a unique housing problem and addressed the following research questions: (a) What are the primary dimensions of energy insecurity?…”

Energy, Poverty, and Health in Climate Change: A Comprehensive Review of an Emerging Literature

“…They also tend to live in the most structurally deficient homes due to a lack of weatherization and efficiency upgrades (77). Energy insecurity can become a chronic issue, partly because low-income renters have limited ability to persuade landlords to maintain proper upkeep and implement effective modifications related to energy efficiency (43,78). They also have limited social and economic capital to afford selfrepairs or to hold landlords accountable through the court system (43).…”

The Distributional Impacts of Energy Taxes

“…Flues and Thomas (2015) estimate slight regressivity of heating fuels taxes across 21 select OECD countries, though in some instances, e.g., Germany, the taxes are estimated to be progressive. The regressivity of heating fuels taxes is moderated to the extent that poor households live in smaller and multifamily homes with less area to heat and less heat loss (Hernández, 2014). On the other hand, the regressivity of heating fuel taxes may be exacerbated if poor households live in older, less efficient housing stock and own older, less efficient household appliances.…”