The Healthy Homes / Healthy Families program was one of the first in the country to address the connection between health and housing issues. Since 1988, City Life/Vida Urbana’s Healthy Homes/Healthy Families program has worked with four community health centers to assist low-income Latino tenants in using self-advocacy and legal routes to solve housing problems that adversely affect family health, such as asthma triggers and crowded living situations.
Healthy Homes partners are: Southern Jamaica Plain Health Center; Martha Eliot Health Center; Brookside Community Health Center and Whittier Street Health Center in Roxbury. City Life/Vida Urbana offers on-site housing counseling to patients that are referred by social workers, doctors and nurses at each of the health centers.
Over the last 15 years, we have helped over 4,000 families. Each year, Healthy Homes/Healthy Families housing advocates educate between 600-800 low-income Boston tenants about their rights and work with families to prevent evictions, helping them obtain safe, stable, affordable housing.
In addition to helping families avert crises, Healthy Homes/Healthy Families has a dynamic prevention component, providing education and workshops on asthma triggers and lead paint awareness. The Healthy Homes program works closely with City Life’s Tenant Organizing Initiative so that tenants can join with others to protect themselves and fight for fair housing practices. Healthy Homes clients are beginning to mobilize. After attending one of the new tenants’ rights workshops at the Martha Eliot Health Center, 10 women came to a hearing at City Hall to voice their support for renewed rent regulation.Staff
Norma Rosario, Program Coordinator 617-524-3541 X303
Gloria Rosario, Housing Advocate 617-524-3541 X302
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