Deeply Affordable Housing Has More Support Than Ever, But One Crucial Piece Is Still Missing Affordable housing surged to the forefront of social justice campaigns and policy debates nationwide after the pandemic laid out how important housing is to public health. The federal government has spent trillions of dollars since to stabilize vast swaths of the economy and society, including housing. In doing so, it revealed just how effective housing can be as an intervention for several vicious cycles experienced by the most vulnerable members of society. Yet accompanying services that would address even more needs have not enjoyed the same financial embrace or focus — and that could mean nodes of concentrated poverty and its associated problems will remain little diminished. 
Organizations fighting poverty, drug addiction, mass incarceration and other problems have rallied around the model of Housing First — the idea that a stable housing situation is the most effective first step in addressing or easing those problems.A growing list of government agencies, from the local level up to the federal, have…  Read the full story here. | | |
