Housing and Health: What Nurses Need to Know about the Economic and Public Health Impacts of the Housing Crisis

Course Description

This CE will provide a snapshot of the current housing crisis in the U.S. and examine how it is driving up cost of living, inequality, and poor health outcomes. We will investigate the causes of the housing crisis and how real estate has driven historic levels of inequality by serving as a primary vehicle for a massive consolidation of wealth for the richest 1% over the last several decades. The course will draw a connection between the role of private equity in health care and in housing to show how the problems of a lack of access to care and a lack of access to housing are linked and derive from policies that have rendered housing and health into economic sources of private profit at immense social cost.

We will also analyze the public health impacts of the housing crisis by looking at studies on the health risks of poor housing, polluted neighborhoods, and homelessness. We’ll consider the impacts on nurses in particular (high cost of living with stagnating wages, increased patient loads, higher acuity, poor working conditions, etc.) and how nurses are fighting for health care and housing as human rights.