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Thriving Together: Humane Housing
Home Owners' Loan Corporation Map of Decatur, Illinois
Mapping Inequality: Redlining in New Deal America

Photo by Home Owner's Loan Corporation on University of Richmond
"Our vision is nothing short of dismantling the legacy of racism in housing. By investing in these housing providers who are on the ground and engaged with their communities, Equitable Path Forward will lead to a new and needed level of responsiveness, investment and equity in the communities that get built."

Priscilla Almodovar, president and chief executive officer
Thriving Together: Humane Housing
Enterprise Community Partners
Vital conditions shape the exposures, choices, opportunities, and adversities that we each encounter throughout our lives. This issue of the WIN Digest highlights the next vital condition in our Thriving Together series: Humane Housing.

People are able to thrive when they have safe, stable places to live. That means we feel secure, our homes and neighborhoods are free from hazards, and our communities provide us what we need. Housing is the biggest expense in most family budgets, making housing affordability a significant factor in financial well-being. Homeownership has long been at the center of the American Dream, offering a way to build family wealth and stable, diverse communities.

Systemic discrimination in housing policy has created persistent inequities in homeownership and wealth, in addition to creating entrenched racial segregation. From the 1930s through the late 1960s, the federal government’s practice of “redlining” limited or denied mortgage insurance in neighborhoods with high rates of Black households and other households of color. The legacy of this discrimination continues today, in exclusionary zoning practices that artificially constrain supply and keep house prices and rents beyond the reach of many.

As a result, access to homeownership, better schools, healthy food options, and other positive externalities are less available to households of color than to White households. This is why Black households today have lower homeownership rates than all other racial and ethnic groups and are three times as likely as White people to live in outdated, crowded, or substandard homes.

Housing insecurity creates chronic health disparities, exacerbating hypertension, diabetes, and other medical conditions that contribute to the alarmingly high COVID-19 death rates in Communities of Color. Poor housing conditions also directly increase families’ exposure to the virus because they make it difficult to practice social distancing and to take required COVID-19 precautions.

Learn more about humane housing from Thriving Together contributor Enterprise Community Partners.  

Connect and share ideas at Thriving.US.
"Home"

Home has a thousand pleasing bands,
A thousand charms are there;
At home we form our wisest plans,
And all our schemes prepare.

Home is a safe, a calm retreat,
To rest the weary soul;
Home makes one's happiness complete,
Where love commands the whole.

At home, congenial souls we find,
We breathe in native air;
At home our thoughts are unconfin'd,—
Security is there.

Deception finds no place at home,
No false or vain applause;
Thrice blessed home! ah, who would roam
Without a powerful cause.

Some lose their sympathies abroad,
By fashion's changing laws;
Some lose their Bible, and their God,
And never know the cause.

But some remember home at last,
Where first they lisp'd a prayer;
And beg for pardon for the past,
And now the promise share.

Eliza Wolcott, "Home"
Photo by A T on Unsplash
THRIVING TOGETHER: CHANGING COURSE
Changing Course summaries feature working definitions, recent facts, key issues, and a short list of pivotal moves that stand out as high priorities for quick action.

Deep Dives are the full source documents contributed by colleagues on the various topics selected in the Changing Course summaries.
Changing Course
Deep Dive
IN THE NEWS
A Framework for Healing-centered Community Development
by Enterprise Community Partners

Building to Heal: A Framework for Holistic Community Development guides practitioners through the purpose and importance of bringing a healing-centered approach to community development and outlines the principles and strategies to achieve this goal.
Using Arts and Culture to Bridge Racial and Cultural Divisions


The International Sonoran Desert Alliance (ISDA) received Section 4 grant to help focus on telling the story of resiliency in their surrounding Native communities, Mexican Town and Indian Village, in Ajo, Arizona. The grant funding supported a series of artist engagements, designed to explore and highlight the history of the built environment in Ajo’s historic town center through the lens of Native American and Latinx youth.
The National Civic League is now accepting applications for the 2021 All-America City award! 

The theme for 2021 is Building Equitable and Resilient communities.
Since 1949, the National Civic League has designated over 500 communities as All-America Cities for their outstanding civic accomplishments. The award, bestowed yearly on 10 communities, recognizes the work of communities in using inclusive civic engagement to address critical issues and create stronger connections among residents, businesses and nonprofit and government leaders.
The Center for Popular Democracy People’s Transition Memo

The People’s Transition Memo is a memorandum drafted by the Center for Popular Democracy and CPD Action outlining our demands for a fair and equitable government. CPD and CPDA will deliver the memo to the Biden administration after the January 20th inauguration.

Between December 14, 2020 and the inauguration, we are collecting signatures from our base to join us in demanding that President-elect Joe Biden fights for real policy changes that will uplift and empower Black, Brown, Indigenous, Asian and Latinx communities unlike ever before. 

Join now in support of the People's Transition Memo for CPD and CPDA’s demand for progress from the Biden administration.
Share on Twitter

We demand: 
✅a voice in our government
✅racial justice
✅education for all
✅immigrant justice
✅equal access to healthcare
✅economic justice 
Join us. Demand real policy change from the Biden admin. Add your name to the #PeoplesTransitionMemo >> https://populardemocracy.org/peoplesmemo 

Health & Housing Partnerships for Equitable Response & Recovery
During this webinar, participants will learn how to center equity in their health and housing partnerships to support their response to and eventual recovery from Covid-19, recognizing the disproportionate impact the pandemic is having on communities of color.
Promoting Health through Housing Quality

This webinar, the second session of Enterprise Community Partners’ Health and Housing series, focuses on the impact that housing conditions can have on health and well-being.
PODCASTS
Building Blocks: Connecting People, Places, and Policies
A space for thought-provoking conversations about the current issues, trends, ideas and big questions facing the affordable housing and community development field in the United States.
Stewardship Snapshot: Franklin, TN

Ken Moore, Mayor of the City of Franklin, and Mindy Tate, Executive Director of Franklin Tomorrow, joined Commons Good podcast host Stacy Wegley for a conversation about stewardship, belonging, and connection.
TRANSFORMATIVE TUESDAYS
Feeling stressed?

Join us for a 4 weeks (30 minutes) experience of resilience and renewal. Lena Hatchett and Reina Goldberg share Brain Gym and other body-based exercises. Connecting to our body wisdom can bring a new sense of empowerment while reducing stress during the holidays and pandemic.

Register today! #FeelingFantastic
Share on Twitter

Feeling stressed? Lena and Reina share Brain Gym and other body-based exercises to realign your joy through body resilience.

Join us for Transformative Tuesdays, an initiative from @WEintheWorldOrg on Tuesdays at 12 PM CT/1 PM EST!

#FeelingFantastic

WE WIN TOGETHER RACIAL JUSTICE COMMUNITY


Members of the WE WIN Together Racial Justice Community answer “Why now?” and what being in this community means for them. Watch here.
SPRING REGISTRATION NOW OPEN
The WE WIN Racial Justice Community provides space for individuals, communities, organizations, and coalitions to learn from one another as part of our racial justice journey.

We have two learning groups, Groundbreakers and Pacesetters, with the option to join both,

Together, we reflect and gather insight for addressing racism in workplaces and throughout life.

Register today for our Spring Semester (February - May) for you or your organization to join this community in transforming from within and together.
BRIGHT SPOTS
These Cities Have New Anthems for a Year of Pandemic and Protest

From Louisville to Detroit to Chicago, listen to songs that reflect nine cities’ distinct cultures in a year of upheaval.

The new project, City Songs Collection, from the U.S. Conference of Mayors, features a playlist of locally produced anthems spearheaded by the cities’ mayors.
Photo by HHM Media/U.S. Conference of Mayors
How to Discover the History of Your Neighborhood, Without Leaving Home

Even during social distancing, you can time-travel back. Here's how I explored the history of my own street. A friend of mine once told me life is short, but it is wide. I’ve been thinking about that lately, less in terms of life, but in terms of space. Most of us aren’t going anywhere these days. Our circles are smaller, our paths closer to home. Space is short. But there’s a different way to go wide when you can’t go far, and that’s to go back.
Photo by Malte Mueller/Getty Images
In Global Development, Reasons for Post-COVID Optimism

This moment calls for the trait that has always kept humans fighting for social change: optimism. Maybe that sounds like a strange concept to advance right now. But from the perspective of my long experience in global health and development for PATH, the World Health Organization, and the Gates Foundation, the post-pandemic rebuild will offer unprecedented opportunities for more people, and a greater diversity of people, to get involved with global development. And to do that with a new social activism approach.
Christmas during COVID-19: USPS launches Operation Santa with new digital letter adoption

The Postal Service is encouraging little ones to send in their postal letters through Dec. 15 to “Santa Claus 123 Elf Road, North Pole, 88888.” The Postal Service knows needs are sky-high this year, and Operation Santa workers are ready to embrace a blizzard of requests.

And for the first time ever, the letter adoption process is all digital – and nationwide. “If you live in Key West, Florida, you could log on and adopt a letter from Portland, Oregon,” Postal Service spokeswoman Kim Frum said.
Photo by USPS Handout
Borromeo String Quartet: Tiny Desk (Home) Concert

After the pandemic hit and musicians migrated online to share their performances, Nicholas Kitchen, the first violinist of the Borromeo String Quartet, built a little "concert shell" in his Boston-area loft he calls "MusicKitchen." It's a practice space for the group which he shares with his wife, the Borromeo's cellist Yeesun Kim.

Like the shells in regular concert spaces, but on a tinier scale, the Kitchen shell (seen behind the players in this video) helps project the sound. And the sounds Kitchen wants to emphasize in this concert come by way of Beethoven, the composer born 250 years ago this week.
TOOLS TO BUILD WELL BEING
NEW Resources from Well Being Trust for Health Systems and Communities to Address Mental Health and Well-Being in the time of COVID-19
A Guide for Health Systems to Save Lives from “Deaths of Despair” and Improve Community Well-Being

A Guide for Health Systems to Save Lives from “Deaths of Despair” and Improve Community Well-Being is a call to action with innovative and evidence-based community solutions for health systems to embrace their critical role in saving lives from deaths of despair.
A Guide to Promoting Health Care
Workforce Well-Being During and After the COVID-19 Pandemic

A Guide to Promoting Health Care Workforce Well-Being During and After the COVID-19 Pandemic lifts up effective ways the health sector and communities can best care for their workforce and first responders, as stressors rise to unprecedented levels.
Photo by Home Owner's Loan Corporation on University of Richmond
Mapping Inequality: Redlining in New Deal America

Mapping Inequality brings one of the country's most important archives to the public. Home Owners Loan Corporation’s (HOLC) documents contain a wealth of information about how government officials, lenders, and real estate interests surveyed and ensured the economic health of American cities. And with the help of ongoing research, we continue to learn at what cost such measures were realized.
Investing in Community Health: A Toolkit for Hospitals

Decades of structural racism and disinvestment have resulted in places of concentrated poverty and significant health inequity. When crisis hits, as we have seen with COVID-19 and its economic fallout, the people who live in these communities, especially Black and Latinx people, suffer disproportionately and recovery is lengthy and uneven.

This toolkit, developed in collaboration with the Catholic Health Association, is designed to help health care organizations look at their resources in a different light, expand their efforts to support their communities, and maximize their impact on community health by harnessing the power of their investment capital. In addition, it delves into a number of key topics: distinguishing between financial contributions and investment strategies, understanding the value of investment strategies for addressing the social determinants of health, and mobilizing investment capital to improve community health.
The Center for Urban Pedagogy Envisioning Development

Envisioning Development is a set of portable, interactive, workshop tools designed to help experts and laypeople communicate. Advocates, policy wonks, community board members, developers, and others can use the tools as a centerpiece for workshops and conversations that describe and clarify problems and propose and communicate solutions.
JOIN THE CONVERSATION!
WE in the World


Tuesdays starting 12/15 at 12:00 PM CT / 1:00 PM ET

Join us for a 4 weeks (30 minutes) experience of resilience and renewal. Lena Hatchett and Reina Goldberg share Brain Gym and other body-based exercises. Connecting to our body wisdom can bring a new sense of empowerment while reducing stress during the holidays and pandemic.
NACCHO


12/17 at 3:00 PM ET

Health departments are navigating a myriad of electronic systems, applications, and solutions aimed to support COVID-19 vaccination planning, distribution, administration, tracking, and reporting.

This webinar will highlight themes emerging jurisdictions’ COVID-19 vaccination plans on use technology for managing COVID-19 vaccination and feature efforts in Maryland to electronically prepare for COVID-19 vaccination.
National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine


1/28 - 1/29

The Roundtable on Population Health Improvement will host a 2-day virtual workshop addressing community-led initiatives for population health improvement. This event will feature presentations and discussions on community-led action around a variety of population health improvement areas, including the social determinants of health.

Policy and Tools Corner

  1. Enterprise Community Partners- Advancing Mobility from Poverty: A Toolkit for Housing and Education Partnerships
  2. Grounded Solutions Network- A Policy Toolkit for Inclusive Growth
  3. Policy Link - Strategies to Advance Racial Equity in Housing Response and Recovery: A Guide for Cities during the Covid-19 Pandemic
  4. Policy Link - Equitable Development Toolkit
WIN Cooperatives