Joseph Jampel, Regional Housing Legal Services
Ms. J., a 68-year-old retired health care worker, spent her career caring for other people. As she got older, however, Ms. J began to develop serious health issues of her own. Her chronic knee pain, for example, can make it difficult for her to enjoy her favorite activities, like browsing the food offerings at Reading Terminal Market.
Luckily for Ms. J,, in February 2017, she was selected for a unit in The Apartments at Allegheny. The Apartments is an affordable housing building for seniors in north Philadelphia. The building was developed and is operated by NewCourtland Elder Services, a Germantown-based nonprofit that provides services, housing and skilled nursing care to Philadelphia seniors.
With The Apartments as her home, Ms. J. is able to live securely on her fixed income. In addition to the affordable rent, the building covers Ms. J.’s utility and laundry bills. Furthermore, Ms. J.’s health has benefited greatly from The Apartments partnership with an on site “LIFE” program, which provides medical and supportive services to seniors. Through the LIFE program, Ms. J. gained access to specialists and care that helped her through major surgery and which continue to offer support for her health. For Ms. J., The Apartments’ combination of affordability and supportive services have enabled her to age with security, health and vitality.
Regional Housing Legal Services (RHLS), a statewide nonprofit legal and advocacy organization, played an integral role in the development of The Apartments. RHLS provided vital legal representation to NewCourtland in structuring, financing and constructing the project. RHLS helped negotiate funding terms with investors and lenders, drafted and negotiated the construction and architect agreements and counseled NewCourtland on related corporate matters.
RHLS’s representation of nonprofits in the development of affordable housing is core to its mission of combating housing injustice across the commonwealth. In its 45 years working in Pennsylvania, RHLS has assisted in the creation of over 10,000 units of housing across the state. That housing construction and preservation has injected over $1 billion into local economies. In addition to its development services work, RHLS also advocates for innovative policies at all levels of government that expand and preserve housing and economic opportunities for low income people and people of color.
Health and Housing
Supportive affordable housing like The Apartments exemplifies the close ties between health and housing. As a large body of research has demonstrated, this relationship is strong and multifaceted. Researchers have identified at least four pathways through which quality affordable housing can improve health outcomes: by preventing the physical and mental traumas people may experience when they are forced to live in shelters or other unsafe conditions; by allowing people to afford homes with healthy conditions (e.g., proper ventilation); by freeing up income that people can use to pay for healthy food and medical treatment; and by allowing people to live in safer neighborhoods that instill numerous health benefits, from offering safe areas for outdoor exercise to alleviating the stress that comes from living around frequent crime, see Lauren Taylor, "Housing and Health: An Overview of the Literature," Health Affairs (June 2018). The integration of supportive services into housing—like at The Apartments—is a fifth pathway. When housing connects residents with health care providers, with transportation that allows them to remain active and with community activities and supports, it undoubtedly benefits those residents’ physical and mental health.
To date, RHLS has worked on over three dozen supportive housing projects across the commonwealth. These projects serve a wide range of vulnerable populations—from seniors, to people with disabilities, to the formerly homeless. In providing legal counsel on these projects, RHLS has helped its nonprofit clients negotiate the myriad legal hurdles involved in complex affordable housing transactions—from piecing together financing from half a dozen funding sources, to solving issues that arise during design and construction, to navigating federal, state and local regulatory processes.
In addition to its work on supportive housing projects, RHLS has also participated in several other initiatives to increase the development of housing that aims to improve health outcomes. RHLS is currently part of an interdisciplinary team assisting families with developing independent living models for their family members with disabilities. Additionally, RHLS has served as legal counsel on a development that brought a medical clinic to a low-income neighborhood and has successfully advocated for state policy changes that increased support for affordable housing that includes supportive services.
RHLS, NewCourtland and other innovators in the commonwealth are not alone in pursuing projects at the intersection of housing and health. Across the country, the housing and health care sectors have increasingly begun to collaborate. They have worked together to remediate home conditions that trigger asthma, to integrate increased health care access into neighborhood revitalization efforts, and to offer health education classes in affordable housing developments, see Corianne Payton Scally, "Emerging Strategies for Integrating Health and Housing," Urban Institute (July 2017).