The Housing & Health Equity (H&HE) Initiative promotes systemic connections that expand, sustain, and enhance innovation and practice.
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Additional H&HE Resources:
- Housing & Health Equity Framework
- Sign up for Housing & Health Equity Email Updates
- Read and Share Housing & Health Equity E-Newsletter Archives
- Housing & Health Equity Initiative Printable Overview Guide (PDF)
- Minnesota Health Fellows Program
In partnership with healthcare and housing leaders, GMHF will foster partnerships and coordinated investment. Acting on the goals below, the Initiative supports affordable and stable homes, as well as improved health outcomes for Minnesota’s families and its most vulnerable residents:
- Engage Healthcare Partners: Engage key healthcare institutions to advance goals around decreasing racial disparities and improving community health through coordinated investment in affordable housing
- Pipeline of Projects: Bridge the healthcare and housing sectors to create a pipeline of innovative projects, programs, or strategies for improved community health through GMHF’s core activities of financing the continuum of affordable housing.
- Research & Data: Identify and assemble research, best practices and data tools to advance the collective understanding of the positive impacts of housing and health equity connections.
- Catalyze Investment: Align and coordinate investment resources. Explore capital sources and uses for housing and health equity solutions in emergent project opportunities related to social determinants of health.
- Policy & Systems Change: Identify learning and solutions to advocate with partners on appropriate policy and systems change opportunities that will effectively link housing and health.
Learn More about the Housing & Health Equity Framework
Project Profiles
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Avivo – Minneapolis, MN |  |
Cascade Creek – Rochester, MN |
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Steve O’Neil Apartments – Duluth, MN |  |
The Commons at Penn – Minneapolis, MN |
Why Housing & Health Equity is Important Now:
GMHF supports H&HE efforts because there are unique conditions that make this the right time:
- The COVID pandemic has provided clarity of the housing and health equity connection.
- Following the murder of George Floyd, addressing racial health disparities has become a driving force for change within healthcare.
- The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is settled law, with court challenges completed and bi-partisan acceptance of ACA benefits to people.
- Affordable housing and homelessness are at crisis levels.
- Healthcare organizations are shifting attention and resources to upstream solutions to community health and racial disparities.
Resources and Benefits of Partnership with GMHF:
GMHF can work with Health Care Institutions and partners to achieve Housing & Health Equity Goals, as it will:
- Convene Housing & Healthcare Leadership in cross-sector conversations to spark innovation and support “pioneers” in our fields of work.
- Connect Training & Technical Assistance from national and local experts that link Housing, Health Equity, and shifting resources and investments toward upstream activities advancing community health.
- Provide Grant Opportunities to advance institutional investments or projects that advance housing as a social determinant of health (i.e. pre-development, consultants, program, or other grants that match healthcare investment).
- Provide Project-Level Technical Assistance on development activities related to real estate, community facilities, healthcare facilities, or other community driven activities being championed by a healthcare partner.
- Financing Resources and Tools available through GMHF including direct real estate investment, leverage/alignment of other public and private sources, and services related to healthcare investment.
- Connect Cross-Sector Partnerships among community development, housing, and healthcare institutions within our well-networked field of work.
Health & Housing Research and Practice:
We are always looking for new research and innovative practices
Your suggestions are welcomed to grow our library of research and case studies that document the housing & health equity connection.
Submit a Story
We recommend the following resources for those interested in this topic and those wishing to join the initiative.
- Greater Minnesota Housing Fund. Materials for the Minnesota Housing & Health Summit held February 2020.
- Center for Community Investment (CCI) Resource Guide for Health System Investment.
- Urban Institute – Affordable Housing Investment: A Guide for Nonprofit Hospitals and Health Systems, by Reynolds, Kathryn , Allen, Eva H. et al. (2019).
- Center for Budget and Policy Priorities – Housing and Health Partners Can Work Together to Close the Affordability Gap, by Bailey, Peggy. (2020). Links between housing and health to make a strong case for the multiple ways the lack of housing is affecting health.
GMHF’s History with Green & Healthy Housing
In 2005, Greater Minnesota Housing Fund (GMHF) and its Minnesota Green Communities partners successfully integrated Green & Healthy Communities criteria into affordable housing building and design standards statewide (see outcomes here). Today this work must continue to advance health and climate solutions.
For more information and background on the Minnesota Green Communities initiative, download this PDF document that captures outcomes and lessons learned
