Home/Housing

The California Healthy Housing Coalitions strongly encourages the use of IPM as a safer and more effective approach to pest management, particularly in multifamily housing. IPM has proven to be an effective, long-term solution to pest problems while reducing exposure to pesticides. The three videos below make the case for landlords and property managers to adopt an IPM approach at their properties by describing what IPM is, what its benefits are, and how to transition a property to IPM. Additional resources are available below.

Wide variety of healthy homes resources maintained by Kevin Kennedy at Children's Mercy Kansas City

Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are emitted as gases from certain solids or liquids. VOCs include a variety of chemicals, some of which may have short- and long-term adverse health effects. Concentrations of many VOCs are consistently higher indoors (up to ten times higher) than outdoors. VOCs are emitted by a wide array of products numbering in the thousands.

SMOKE-FREE PUBLIC HOUSING

The short consumer guide covers portable air cleaners and furnace or HVAC filters used in a home. It includes tips for selecting a portable air cleaner, furnace filter, or HVAC filter.

These CDC, EPA, HUD co-branded training materials were developed to accompany the co-branded Home Assessment Checklist. This training is intended to provide more detailed information about asthma triggers and to help guide home visitors to start a dialogue with the family that is tailored for the home to reduce environmental allergens, irritants and pollutants.

A series of videos covering common sources of asthma triggers.

This guide is designed to give an overview of the practices and strategies necessary for code enforcement programs to protect residents and preserve housing effectively. Each chapter addresses a specific component of code enforcement, and offers resources to assist jurisdictions in implementing programs.

This report proceeds to describe the cultural models that the public uses to think about housing and health. As all people have experiences with housing, it is not surprising that they bring a powerful set of cultural models to thinking about this topic. Some of these ways of thinking lead people to be concerned about housing issues, but at the same time limit people’s ability to recognize the types of solutions that are needed. Most critically, our research shows that people have a strong tendency to personalize housing issues, which in turn prevents them from seeing the structural sources of housing problems and dampens support for the policies and programs that can effectively address these problems.

Allergens are widespread, but highly variable in U.S. homes, according to the nation’s largest indoor allergen study to date. Researchers from the National Institutes of Health report that over 90 percent of homes had three or more detectable allergens, and 73 percent of homes had at least one allergen at elevated levels. The findings (link is external) were published November 30 in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.