Join us for an informational webinar on August 16th from 3-4pm ET.  The webinar, entitled “Broadening the Housing Movement,” is open to all individuals and organizations that are interested in learning more about this exciting multi-sector housing campaign. Attendees will learn about the campaign’s progress, short- and long-term plans, policy advocacy goals, and ways to get involved.

Guest speakers include:

• Diane Yentel, President & CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition
• Mike Koprowski, National Campaign Director of Opportunity Starts at Home 
• Dan Hawkins, Senior VP at the National Association of Community Health Centers 
• Greg Payne, Director of the Maine Affordable Housing Coalition

Mike Koprowski, National Campaign Director, spoke to the crowd about the Opportunity Starts at Home campaign and the importance of broadening the housing movement to other sectors such as education and healthcare. 

Research from Children’s HealthWatch (CHW), one of the nation’s leading networks of pediatricians, public health researchers, and children’s health policy experts, continues to demonstrate that unaffordable and unstable housing not only causes and perpetuates health disparities among individuals, but also balloons healthcare costs for the entire country.  CHW, based at Boston Medical Center, is one of the founding partners of the Opportunity Starts at Home campaign.

In its groundbreaking study, CHW found that unstable housing among families with children will cost the U.S. $111 billion in avoidable health and education expenditures over the next ten years.

The authors calculated the nationwide health-related costs of mothers and children who have either: 1) experienced homelessness; 2) moved two or more times; or 3) been behind on rent in the previous year. Over the next 10 years, assuming the current number of families living in unstable homes persists, the American health system will spend $76.8 billion treating mothers experiencing worse physical and mental health and $34.3 billion treating children.  Such costs include more hospitalizations, medications, dental procedures, ambulance visits, mental health care services, and special education services for children.

“A stable home is like a vaccine for my patients and their families,” said Dr. Megan Sandel, practicing pediatrician and principal investigator with CHW.  “It keeps them healthy now and in the future. But, the pharmacy is not fully stocked. We need investments to ensure everyone has access to the stable home vaccine.”

Mr. Greenstein remarks that CBPP has worked on affordable housing policy for more than 20 years because it is “simply fundamental to the well-being of low income families.” To address the nation’s housing affordability crisis, “the federal government has to play an absolutely central role,” said Mr. Greenstein. “It plays a role today, but that role isn’t robust enough to address the problem.”

Building the political will to implement stronger federal solutions is a major challenge, he acknowledges, and it is going to require a fundamentally new approach to housing advocacy. “We need something beyond what’s been done in the past,” he explains. “We need a broader-based campaign.”