As part of its work to end housing insecurity in the U.S. within a generation, Enterprise Community Partners has undertaken strategic initiatives to make affordable, healthy, well-designed, and sustainable housing options available to low-income families. This presentation will describe the Enterprise Green Development Plan and Green Communities Criteria, which bring the improved health, economic and environmental benefits of sustainable construction practices to low-income families. The criteria require housing providers to integrate public health data into the pre-development process and present developers with a framework for engaging the health sector and building support for health-oriented developments. This “outcomes-based design” approach will be discussed, exploring how metrics may be established to demonstrate the impact of housing on residents’ health. Examples of practical application will presented, including ways to incentivize active design to produce buildings and neighborhoods that encourage walking and provide access to healthy foods to help the nation address the epidemic of obesity and chronic diseases such as hypertension and diabetes.

Since 1998, Mercy Housing has partnered with numerous healthcare systems in the country to improve communities across the United States. Mercy Housing’s Mission is to create stable, vibrant, and healthy communities by developing financing and operating affordable, program-enriched housing for families, senior, and people with special needs who lack the economic resources to access quality, safe housing opportunities. Through its Strategic Healthcare and other Partnerships, Mercy Housing has leveraged resources to develop, finance, and preserve more than 48,000 affordable homes. Healthcare Partnerships share health outcomes of associated Mercy Housing health initiatives, and discuss lessons learned that others may use to develop health and housing partnerships.

Partnerships between health and housing stakeholders have the potential to transform a community. This session will explore how redeveloping an existing building can unite health and housing stakeholders and create opportunities to provide high quality, affordable housing in low –income communities. The session will use the Aria Denver community as a case study to examine how a developer has operationalized the social determinants of health model to create a health initiative called Cultivate Health. Aria Denver contains pocket parks, a production farm, community gardens, and a “pay-what-you-can” farm stand. The session will describe a partnership between housing and health stakeholders and share the development’s preliminary outcomes, successes, and challenges.