Developing an equity-centered approach to enforcing laws enabling access to habitable housing for racial and ethnic minority groups
Racial and ethnic disparities in health are a result of inequalities in access to key resources, such as quality and stable housing. In the past, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) has invested in projects that are focused on improving community-level conditions, such as the availability of affordable housing. Nevertheless, as noted in this call for proposals, “the enactment of new laws—even ones whose language centers health and equity—will not actually advance health or equity if they are not effectively and equitably implemented.”
We plan to use the bounded justice framework created by Professor Melissa Creary and the health justice framework as revised by Ruqaiijah Yearby, Emily Benfer, Lindsay Wiley, and Seema Mohapatra to structure and implement the project.
Bounded justice suggests that it is impossible to attend to fairness, entitlement, and equity when the basic social and physical infrastructures have been eroded by racism and other historically entrenched -isms. Thus, it calls for a systematic process involving the continual interplay between self-reflection and action to help those seeking to eliminate structural inequities as well as those evaluating these actions. The health justice framework provides the four principles guiding this systematic process: (1) structural remediation; (2) financial supports and accommodations; (3) community engagement and empowerment; and (4) truth, reconciliation, and healing.
Thus, our team, in partnership with key community partners, will conduct an initial environmental and data scan of two jurisdictions to understand the gaps in the equitable enforcement of housing laws as a foundation for creating a framework and assessment tool that will inform how RWJF structures and implements a new call for funding concerning the inequitable enforcement of housing laws. As part of the environmental scan, we plan to track legal provisions regarding the enforcement the right to a habitable home, of no cause evictions (i.e. no reason stated to evict, which may hide discrimination and retaliation), and penalties for unlawful eviction. Building on this work, the team, in partnership with key community partners, will conduct an environmental and data scan of the federal level and three additional jurisdictions to test the framework and assessment tool as well as provide best practices for the equitable enforcement of housing laws.