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APRIL 2007
ANDP selects Susan Adams to Lead Advocacy Department, Programs
Affordable Workforce Housing Opportunity Agreement Approved
ANDP Welcomes New Members to Board of Directors
Terwilliger Teams with ULI to Create Center fo
Workforce Housing
Regional and Neighborhood Impact on Healthy Housing
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Regional and
neighborhood impact on healthy housing
Does the built environment have an effect on the overall health of
our region? Absolutely. The upcoming report Making the Case for
Mixed Income and Mixed Use Communities – The Next Generation
(MTC-NG) will include a unique and thorough examination of how one’s
neighborhood and region play important roles in healthy housing.
The Mixed Income Communities Initiative (MICI) commissioned Dr.
Catherine Ross of Georgia Tech’s Center for Quality Growth and
Regional Development (CQGRD) to prepare a report entitled “Health
Housing: Forging the Economic and Empirical Foundation.” The report
proposes a new framework to describe healthy housing as a
convergence of the three elements of the built environment: the
housing unit, neighborhood, and region. In doing so, it examines the
health impact of factors such as the design and condition of the
house, the land use policies and transportation policies of the
region and the density and connectivity of the neighborhood.
To facilitate increased dialogue on these topics, Healthy Housing
examines both direct and indirect factors to demonstrate how
seemingly unrelated events impact neighborhood and regional health.
For example, consider how your daily commute impacts the region.
Whether you are living in one of Atlanta’s sprawling suburbs or are
participating in the resurgence of urban living, chances are you’ve
become increasingly automobile dependent. Such dependency creates
massive regional traffic congestion, lowers air quality and greatly
impacts the overall health status of the region’s residents.
To improve our quality of life, it is vital that the link between
health, housing, neighborhood design, and the region is clarified
and becomes the subject of more focused research, targeted and
refined data collection, informed policy creation and public and
private investment. Healthy Housing is an important first step in
the process of increasing our understanding.
The report, which will be made available in its entirety and
summarized in MTC-NG, aims to:
-identify the economic and empirical links between housing and
health,
-develop a new conceptual model on the complex effects of housing on
health,
-present recommendations and future research needs to strengthen the
link between housing and health.
“While planning the new Making the Case report, we examined what was
missing from the local housing dialogue. We realized that what had
not yet been highlighted was how housing and health play an integral
part in the quality of our region,” explains Shannon Carey, ANDP’s
director of external affairs. “After support and guidance from the
Health Policy Institute of the Joint Center for Political and
Economic Studies we engaged CQGRD to prepare this portion of the
report. We are encouraged by what we’ve seen and we think this will
generate considerable discussion on the topic.”
The report Making the Case for Mixed Income and Mixed Use
Communities and all of its commissioned reports, including the
Healthy Housing report, will be made available to the public in late
Spring 2007.
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