Editors' Letter: Housing is Health

In June 2024, when this issue of CONTEXT was first conceived, the Grants Pass v. Johnson ruling was issued by the U.S. Supreme Court. It overturned a lower court decision that deemed it “cruel and unusual punishment” under the 8th Amendment for municipalities to ban individuals from sleeping in public places, even if there was nowhere else for them to go. The original characterization of those ordinances as “cruel and unusual punishment” touches on the link between housing and an individual’s overall health and wellbeing at its most fundamental level. 

Since the Grants Pass ruling, the issue of housing has continued to intensify. Philadelphia and the surrounding collar counties are no exception, and leaders are addressing the challenge head on. Take Mayor Parker’s HOME initiative, an ambitious program that aims to create or preserve 30,000 homes, as a prime example. The topline number grabs headlines, but the details reveal a holistic strategy that requires an all-hands and all-ideas approach. This includes preservation and other means of keeping residents in homes — shallow rent subsidies, supportive services, stabilization and other non-traditional means of avoiding eviction. We highlight these ideas because they are not the obvious ones when we talk about the creation of affordable housing, or housing in general. Housing preservation can be just as powerful as ground-up construction in solving this crisis.  

To that end, the majority of the projects and ideas highlighted in this issue are non-traditional forms of housing. Some of these strategies adapt housing that exists; others highlight how assets can be repositioned by providers of transitional housing as permanent options. The key piece — one that goes beyond housing as a structure and housing as home — is the tie-in of social/supportive services to create environments that address the whole person. Inequities in housing are often paired with inequities in health, and one often begets the other. Across these articles it’s abundantly clear that quality housing is essential to a person’s well-being. When not available, it comes at the expense of human health. It would therefore be cruel to deny someone access to safe and affordable housing.   

Jeff Pastva, FAIA,  CPHC, LEED AP  
Scannapieco Development Corporation  
Co-editor 

Dana Rice, AIA, NCARB 

CICADA Architecture/ Planning, Inc. 
Co-editor