Connecting Housing, Community, and Health

The San Pablo Avenue Corridor extends about a mile north of downtown Oakland, California. Like many other low-income neighborhoods and communities of color across the United States—including Detroit, Minneapolis, and Los Angeles—it’s an area hit hard by decades of disinvestment in housing, schools, jobs, and services for local residents. Compared to their neighbors in the prosperous Oakland Hills, the nearly 8,000 residents around San Pablo Avenue can expect to live 14 years less on average.

Expanding access to affordable housing along the avenue is essential to equitable community development. When residents don’t have affordable places to live, the stress on families and neighborhoods can have dangerous implications. Individual and family health, and educational achievement suffer, and interactions with police and the justice system become more common. Right now, a lack of housing means that populations already more susceptible to COVID-19 are at even greater risk, because they literally cannot shelter in place.