Summary

Between 2018 and 2020, staff from HIP participated in a collaborative research project called Lead Local, which was led and funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.  The Project brought together well-respected local power-building leaders in the fields of community organizing, advocacy, and research to answer the question: How does community power catalyze, create and sustain conditions for healthy communities?

Primer on Power, Housing Justice and Health Equity

As one of the primary grantees, HIP partnered with the Right to the City Alliance to learn more about how building community power helps address housing inequities and improves health.  HIP and RTTC’s learnings are summarized in a Primer on Power, Housing Justice and Health Equity, which defines the concepts of community power and dimensions of power, and illustrates the concepts with case studies, examples and recommendations from the housing justice field.

Some of our key findings are:

• Everyone has a role to play in advancing housing justice, yet community power building must be at the center of decision-making processes to transform our inequitable housing systems.
• Five interrelated Just Housing Principles — community control, affordability, inclusivity, permanence, and health and sustainability — can be used to analyze whether current or alternative housing models successfully provide affordable and dignified homes for all.
• The Three Faces (or Dimensions) of Power is a useful framework for understanding how power can be built and used over time to advance or inhibit equitable policies.  
• Across the nation, despite historical and current inequities, dozens of communities most impacted by housing (and social) inequities are successfully organizing to build community power and take back decision-making power over conditions impacting their lives.

Survey of Health Departments Collaborating with Organizers

In addition to the primer, HIP conducted a national survey of local and state health departments that have collaborated with community power building organizations. This report describes a range of activities and strategies that governmental health agencies and community organizers pursued together to advance health equity and build community power in local and state jurisdictions.

Some of our key findings from the survey include:

• Many health departments did not differentiate between community power building organizations (CPBOs) and community-based organizations (CBOs) despite specific guidance and definitions.  Of the 128 responses, only 29 met our criteria.
• Of the health department respondents (n =29) that were collaborating with CPBOs and were included in our survey,
  • The majority worked in local health departments that serve 500,000+ people.
  • The most common topic areas of collaboration were housing, criminal/legal system, and food justice/security with issue- or neighborhood-based CPBOs.
  • Most were working to build and share power by actively including impacted communities in decision-making processes, building relationships, and strategizing together with the CPBO.
  • Most reported increased staff understanding about opportunities and strategies to address health inequities as a result of their collaboration
  • Numerous respondents reported that their collaborations resulted in the health department working more “upstream” to address inequities and increased their capacity to do meaningful community engagement.