Good Health by (Public Housing) Design

The national goal of many federally funded housing programs includes providing decent housing and a suitable living environment for low- and moderate-income people. Well, the Denver Housing Authority (DHA) is stretching this goal to encompass its tenants' physical health. In 2009, DHA developed a new master plan for the Lincoln Park/La Alma neighborhood that incorporated a "Health Impact Assessment" (HIA), a tool that helps community developers identify how a proposed project potentially affects people's health.

But DHA didn't stop there. In 2010, as DHA and its developers began implementing the plan, they "decided to hold themselves accountable for improving health with every decision they made. They wanted to measure their success or failure and became on (sic) of the first in the country to use what's called Health Development Measurement Tool (HDMT)," an instrument that measures health broadly from "healthy housing and transportation to the economy, environmental stewardship and social cohesion--even how amenities affect people's well-being."

The tool led DHA and its developers to reconsider their design options.  For example, when they used the tool to assess competing designs, they discovered that "many smaller green spaces would be healthier for residents than building one large open space. They also decided not to put exercise equipment in the new buildings, but rather to encourage people to support their existing community amenities and walk to the nearby recreation center." 

DHA's experience shows (1) how housing and public health policies intersect and (2) the benefits of measuring any policy's interdisciplinary effects.