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The COVID 19 pandemic exposed and clarified the significance of housing for health and well-being. Recognition that housing instability and homelessness contributed to the spread of COVID 19 spurred urgent and creative action to address symptoms of a longstanding affordable housing crisis including the risk of eviction from rental housing. As one example, here in Connecticut, a statewide moratorium on evictions helped keep renters housed when pandemic related wage loss caused them to fall behind on rent.

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought renewed attention to a pre-existing and severe affordable rental housing crisis throughout the U.S. and here in Connecticut. Prior to the pandemic, there was no state in this country where a full-time minimum wage job was sufficient to affordably rent a one- bedroom apartment. Here in Connecticut, nearly two full-time jobs were needed.

Since the early days of the United States’ COVID-19 pandemic, state and local officials have raised concerns about the unique challenges that the virus poses to individuals who lack a place to call home. The challenges of “sheltering in place” for those who lack shelter are abundantly clear. Indeed, several cities are reporting high numbers of cases among individuals staying in homeless shelters and on the street. Some local governments have worked to mitigate this problem by finding temporary sources of housing in hotels and other properties.

The US is facing a growing and severe affordable housing crisis. Rents have outstripped wages, and in the vast majority of the country, full-time minimum wage work is insufficient to affordably rent a two-bedroom market-rate apartment. Today, half of low-income households spend more than 50% of their income on housing. This crisis has contributed to poor housing conditions, housing instability, and eviction among low-income households. The shortage of affordable housing is not only a housing problem, it is also a population health problem, given the well-established relationship between housing conditions and health outcomes.

Nursing home residents at risk for overtreatment of diabetes

Lorenzo Salinas doesn’t know how he’ll pay next month’s rent, much less how he would keep his whole family from getting sick if one of them fell ill with the coronavirus. There’s little space to spare in the two-bedroom apartment in South Los Angeles where he lives with his wife and three children, ages 11 to 20.

Lack of access to something as basic as eyeglasses is one of the many ways that poverty itself serves as a barrier to economic mobility, writes Danya Keene, an assistant professor at the Yale School of Public Health.