The Kresge Foundation has awarded $1.16 million in new grants to support a learning community of 29 organizations advancing innovative community-generated multi-sector solutions to improve health outcomes, housing affordability and quality.

These 29 organizations all participated in Kresge’s Advancing Health Equity Through Housing initiative. Since launching the initiative in 2018, Kresge has awarded more than $8 million to 32 organizations.

Through Advancing Health Equity Through Housing, the foundation sought to identify and accelerate community-driven practices that connect the housing and health sectors and recognize multi-sector partnerships that preserve and increase the supply of stable housing to improve health, well-being and health equity in low-income communities.

Projects focused on health outcomes that include children’s health; complex patient needs; housing-related conditions like asthma and lead poisoning; neighborhood conditions affecting health such as trauma, stress and other mental health issues; and prevention of chronic diseases. Work also linked to other promising practices such as new financing methods that connect the housing and health sectors and centering a Promotora model to address housing issues related to health problems.

With this new funding, grantees will co-design and lead a learning community over the next 18 months with the goal of enhancing peer connections; sharing lessons, messages and strategies; and continuing to examine the connection between housing and health.

“As grantees work in common ways around a shared set of values engage in a learning community they can, together, define the next horizons and imperatives for moving the field forward, deepen their own strategies through peer learning and reflection, and surface and distill best practices,” Stacey Barbas, senior program officer with the Health Program, said.

Organizations include:

• American Heart Association, Dallas, Texas
• Atlanta Regional Collaborative for Health Improvement, Atlanta, Georgia
• Atlanta Volunteer Lawyers Foundation, Atlanta, Georgia
• Baltimore Regional Housing, Baltimore, Maryland
• Bread for the City, Washington, DC
• Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Washington, D.C.
• Chicanos Por La Causa, Maricopa, Arizona
• Comunidades Latinas Unidas En Servicio ,Minneapolis, Minnesota
• Connecticut Fair Housing Center, Hartford, Connecticut
• Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative, Roxbury, Massachusetts
• Gulf Coast Housing Partnership, New Orleans, Louisiana
• Hawaiian Community Assets, Inc., Honolulu, Hawaii
• Homes for All South, New York, New York
• Hope Community, Inc., Minneapolis, MN
• Isles, Inc. ,Trenton, New Jersey
• Latino Health Access, Santa Ana, California
• Make the Road NY, New York, New York
• Massachusetts Smart Growth Alliance,  Boston, Massachusetts
• Miami Workers Center, Miami, Florida
• Neighborhood Developers, Chelsea, Massachusetts
• New Kensington Community Development Corporation, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
• Partnership for the Public Good, Buffalo, New York
• Piedmont Housing Alliance, Charlottesville, Virginia
• Right to the City, New York, New York
• Stewards of Affordable Housing for the Future, Washington, D.C.
• Strategic Actions for a Just Economy, Los Angeles, California
• Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department , Tacoma, Washington
• West Harlem Environmental Action, New York, New York
• Yakima Council of Governments, Yakima County, Washington

For more information on the Advancing Health Equity Through Housing initiative, click here.