Housing
How does housing affect health?
Not everyone has the same opportunities to be healthy where they live, and housing plays a major role in a person's life. Research clearly demonstrates decisions affecting housing quality, affordability, and stability, as well as neighborhood characteristics, can shape those places to be supportive of health and help reduce, or even prevent, disease.
Affordable Housing
What is affordable housing?
Housing is essential to health as it fulfills a basic human need for shelter; however, the cost of housing also impacts health. The federal government considers housing to be affordable if a family spends no more than 30 percent of its income on housing costs, including utilities.
Affordable Housing & Health
A lack of affordable housing can limit people's ability to meet other basic needs and force them to make difficult choices between paying for rent, utilities, food, transportation, medications, or healthcare. Unaffordable housing often causes financial strain which has been linked to negative health outcomes including anxiety, depression, toxic stress, malnutrition, diabetes, and many other chronic conditions.
Families with lower incomes are disproportionately impacted by unaffordable housing and are more likely to experience negative health impacts due to lack of affordable housing. Data shows that Winnebago County households with the lowest income, are 12 times more likely to be paying 30 percent or more of their income on housing costs compared to households with the highest income.
How does affordable housing affect communities?
The availability of affordable housing shapes people's choices about where they live, often leaving families with lower incomes in low-quality housing in neighborhoods with higher rates of poverty, crime, and fewer health promoting resources such as parks, walking/biking paths, social activities, etc.
Additionally, economic factors are important determinants of health, and affordable housing is important to the economic vitality of communities. For example, affordable housing can help attract and retain employees to a community and support the local workforce by allowing people to live close to their jobs. When people live close to their jobs, they have a shorter commute, which can lead to community benefits such as reduced traffic congestion, air pollution, and road infrastructure expenditures (Housing Virginia Toolkit, 2019).
How do policies of the past shape communities of today?
Where a person lives, their zip code, can affect their health, their job prospects and social status and mobility. Historical records point to many policies that deliberately limited the access to home loans to Black residents of cities while paving the way to low interest loans and other assistance to while residents. These practices fostered prosperity in white neighborhoods and decline in others throughout the years.
The Mapping Inequality webpage provides a glimpse of the effects this had in many urban areas of the U.S.
Winnebago vs. Wisconsin
46%
of households in the City of Oshkosh are either living in poverty or an ALICE (Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed) household, compared to 33% of households in Winnebago County (state average: 25.8%) (United Way Fox Cities ALICE Report, 2016).
Renting
In Winnebago County, individuals who are renting are more likely to spend 30% or more on their monthly housing costs than individuals who own their home (American Community Survey, 2017).
- Median household income in the City of Oshkosh is $45,708 which equates to $3,809/month before taxes. 30% of this equals spending at least $1,142.70 per month on monthly housing costs (rent/mortgage, utilities, insurance, condo fees, etc.)
- Average monthly rent in the City of Oshkosh is $704. Average monthly rent in Winnebago County is $721 (American Community Survey, 2017).
Lead
How does lead in housing affect health?
The quality and age of housing affects health outcomes. Older homes which might have lead-based paint or other hazardous building materials can result in negative health outcomes. In Winnebago County, 61.3% of housing was built prior to 1980 and 25.6% were built prior to 1950; percentages very similar to what is found across the state of Wisconsin. Lead-based paints were banned for use in 1978; homes built before that date are likely to contain some lead-based paint. As lead-based paint deteriorates, lead contaminated dust and particles are inhaled and can cause serious health effects, especially in children. Lead exposure may cause a range of health effects, from behavioral problems and learning disabilities, to seizures and death.
In 2016, 535 children under the age of 6 in Winnebago County were tested for lead poisoning. 25 had elevated blood lead levels.
In general, in Winnebago County, the census tracts with the highest percent of elevated blood lead levels in children under age 6, have the highest proportion of rental to owner occupied units. Overall, 31% of all housing units in Winnebago County are occupied rentals.
Winnebago vs. Wisconsin
4.7%
Of children under the age of 6 with elevated blood lead levels compared to the state rate of 4.9%.
(DHS County Environmental Health Profile 2019).61.3%
Of housing in Winnebago County was built prior to 1980 and 25.6% were built prior to 1950; percentages very similar to what is found across the state of Wisconsin.