Housing, equity, and health in U.S. news, 2020-2021: Findings and recommendations

Housing, equity, and health in U.S. news, 2020-2021: Findings and recommendations

Introduction

The evidence is clear: Health depends on access to safe, stable housing.^1–5  Unfortunately, a legacy of inequitable and unjust housing policies limit access to housing for many people, based on factors like race, immigration status, disability status, income-level, gender, and sexuality. These systemic barriers to having a quality, affordable home are key drivers of health inequities in the United States. As such, helping the public and policymakers understand the connection between housing and health is a key step toward not only advancing housing policy and improving community health but also toward strengthening the movement for racial and health equity.

Is the impact of housing on health clear to the public and lawmakers? We can look to the media to find out. News coverage provides insight into the public discourse about housing, as well as into opportunities for and potential barriers to shifting that discussion. All forms of media — print, broadcast, and social — significantly influence the public’s and policymakers’ knowledge of many issues, including housing.^6–8 Journalists and editors often set the agenda for the public debate about a topic by deciding which details they report (or don’t report) and how they frame their stories. News coverage, then, offers a window into understanding whether and how people think about housing. Is it on their radars? If so, what do they know about the problem? What they think should be done?

Framing refers to how an issue is portrayed and understood. Frames shape the parameters of public debates by promoting particular definitions of a problem, its causes, its moral aspects, and its possible solutions.^9–11 Many factors influence what frames get evoked in news stories: the language that’s used, what types of information are highlighted, the potential solutions that are discussed, and whose perspectives are included or left out. Frames that are repeated often and deeply ingrained become the housing narratives that either confine our policy choices or make a vision of housing justice possible. 

Understanding how journalists currently frame housing, and how those choices shape long-term narratives, can help housing and health advocates be strategic about their communication strategies. For example, a framing analysis of the news can inform advocates as they decide what messages to use to win immediate policy goals, while also shaping local and national narratives to portray housing as a social good that supports individual and community health.

To understand the specific nuances of how news coverage frames the complex intersections of housing and health equity, Berkeley Media Studies Group (BMSG) conducted an ethnographic content analysis¹² of news about housing and health equity from media markets across the country, informed by feedback from grantees funded by the Kresge Foundation’s Advancing Health Equity Through Housing Initiative working in those communities. Here, we present a summary of findings, as well as recommendations that we hope will help grantees and other advocates working to emphasize the nuanced connections between housing and health and elevate just and equitable approaches to ensure stable housing and good health for everyone.

What we did

To build on quantitative news analyses BMSG conducted in 2021, we analyzed the content of print news stories about housing and health from across the country. To identify which stories to analyze, BMSG researchers first developed a search string (targeted words used to pull articles from large databases) to collect news about a range of housing issues. The search string was informed by responses to a questionnaire that was sent to Health Equity and Housing (HEH) grantees working in 22 different locations around the country. To capture news about housing, the final search string included terms related to grantees’ diverse focus areas and policy strategies that center racial and health equity, including affordable housing, tenant protections, homelessness, and community land trusts, as well as equity and health-related terms, such as “low-income,” “disparities,” “equity,” and others.

Using LexisNexis and ProQuest, BMSG identified and collected print and online news articles published between June 1, 2020 and May 31, 2021 in 22 outlets that represented grantee media markets (see Appendix A for a full list of outlets and media markets sampled). For each of the four outlets in the sample that included both national or regional and local coverage (such as The New York Times or the Los Angeles Times), we added location terms like “New York City” or “Los Angeles” to narrow the search to local news.

We found 4,349 articles published between June 1, 2020 and May 31, 2021 that met our search criteria. We used proportional random sampling to build a representative sample of 166 articles. We then removed 30 articles that did not substantively discuss housing issues in the United States (see Figure 1): For example, we excluded a story about a crime that happened to involve a recently evicted tenant¹³ and articles about housing issues outside of the United States. Our final generalizable sample included 136 relevant articles from around the country.

To code relevant articles, we drew on our synthesis of communication research about housing, as well as our own previous studies of housing in the news,^14,15 feedback from Kresge’s housing and health team, and insights from HEH grantees. We developed a robust guide to help coders identify and capture persistent themes in the coverage.

The final codebook addressed questions like:

• What kinds of topics related to housing appear in news coverage?
• Do articles about housing and health equity discuss root causes of housing instability, insecurity, inequity, or homelessness, and the consequences for individuals, families, and communities?
• Who speaks in the news about housing and health equity? Whose voices are missing?
• Who is called upon to take action to address housing issues, or is portrayed as being responsible for the cause of housing issues and the solutions?
• Do solutions to housing instability or homelessness appear? If so, which ones are named?
• How is the COVID-19 pandemic framed in news about housing and health equity?
• Do articles about housing and health equity explicitly address racial equity? If so, how?

Before coding the full sample, we used an iterative process to refine the codebook guide. We then conducted multiple rounds of intercoder reliability testing and a statistical test to achieve consensus among coders to ensure that coder agreement did not occur by chance; we achieved satisfactory reliability measures for each coding variable (Krippendorff’s alpha >.8¹⁶).

What we found

We first present overall findings about article types and topics, followed by a summary of how equity and health were framed in the stories. Finally, we describe the key “characters” who appeared in many stories about housing, equity, and health, and other features of the coverage relevant for housing advocates.

What’s the story about housing? Overall findings

Across the nation, the majority of articles about housing, equity, and health focused on homelessness (see Figure 2), though affordable housing and tenant protections also generated coverage and, in some media markets, generated more news than homelessness (see the quantitative news analysis for highlights from each of the 22 jurisdictions). While our search string did not explicitly include terms related to assistance for landlords, over one-fifth of articles (22%) mentioned protections for landlords, including mortgage support and conflict mediation programs with tenants, which an article from The Philadelphia Inquirer described as ”a program that would benefit landlords by providing access to resources.”¹⁷

Figure 2: Housing issues in news coverage.

News peaked in December 2020 with stories about the expiration (and subsequent extension) of eviction moratoriums related to COVID-19. Coverage spiked again in April 2021, when President Biden announced the American Rescue Plan, which included grants for addressing homelessness and financial assistance for tenants and renters to compensate their landlords.  We wanted to know: When housing and health appeared together in the news, why? Why that story, and why that day? Reporters commonly refer to the catalyst for a story as a “news hook,” and many factors can influence why reporters and editors select some stories and not others.

For each article we answered the question, “Why was this story published today?” We found that over half were in the news because of a milestone or breakthrough achieved in a policy, initiative, or program (see Figure 3): A typical article from The New Orleans Advocate, for example, hinged on the announcement of federal grants to support subsidized housing in the city.¹⁸ At times, the milestones that drove coverage were controversies that generated fierce debate, like the unveiling of an affordable housing plan that triggered a battle between affluent and working class neighbors in Dallas¹⁹; the release of a statement warning about the possibility of an eviction crisis in Annapolis²⁰; or a review of a debate over closing shelters for people experiencing homelessness during the pandemic in Philadelphia.²¹ 

Figure 3: News hooks in final sample (n = 136 articles)

Although most articles were news articles (see Figure 4), almost one-fifth of stories (19%) about housing and health equity were opinion pieces, like editorials, op-eds, or letters to the editor. Half of all opinion pieces contained language or framing that in some way named equity issues (13 articles, or 10% of the full sample), as when, for example, opinion authors in The Washington Post called for “additional attention to addressing the root causes of eviction” and named the need for “strengthening emergency rental assistance programs and housing subsidies for eligible families [to] bring attention to the systematic problems of housing affordability.”²² By contrast, other opinion pieces (7% of the sample) focused instead on financial impacts on developers, as when one resident in a letter to the editor stated, “The overwhelming obstacle blocking the path to more affordable housing construction in Los Angeles is that the numbers just don’t work. … Private developers cannot make a profit on low-income housing.”²³

Figure 4: Coverage type of articles in final sample (n=136 articles)

Who’s in the frame? “Characters” in the news about housing, equity, and health

To understand whose perspectives and stances are elevated in the news and whose are obscured, we determined which speakers were quoted or discussed in the news about housing, equity, and health, as well what they said (or what was said about them). Overall, we found that government officials, most representing city or state government, were most frequently quoted, and accounted for 25% of speakers in the news (see Figure 5).

Figure 5: Speakers quoted in articles about housing, equity, and health (n=136)  

Authentic voices — people who can speak about an issue from the unique vantage point of their own lived experience — accounted for almost one fifth of news speakers (17%). These sources, such as people experiencing homelessness, tenants, and landlords, included both those who support and those who oppose housing policies that promote equity and justice. Representatives of community organizations (like churches and schools) made up 11% of speakers, while just 5% of speakers were medical or public health professionals, like a Los Angeles doctor who discussed her experience providing “street medicine” to unhoused people.³³

People who identified as housing advocates made up 14% of speakers. Housing is a complicated and multifaceted issue, and housing advocates are not a homogenous group, so it’s not surprising that an equity focus is not always central to housing advocacy work. Specific players may at times be aligned and at times in opposition. For example, coalition members who work together to advance affordable housing projects may not align when it comes to tenant justice work that centers racial equity. To help make sense of the diversity of perspectives around housing, Figure 6 represents a simplified assessment of the perspectives of three groups involved in shaping housing policy and news coverage of these policies. This chart is based on BMSG’s work with housing and health justice advocates from around the country. 

Figure 6: A range of perspectives on housing activism and advocacy

NIMBY (“Not In My Backyard”)	YIMBY (“Yes In My Backyard”)	Housing Justice
Housing as a commodity	Housing as a commodity	Housing as a social good
Support limiting supply/development of new housing in certain areas	Support development of new housing	Support equitable access to affordable housing
Protect value of property and personal wealth	Protect corporate interests and profits	Protect human rights
Individual responsibility and solutions (bootstrapping)	Market responsibility and solutions (supply and demand)	State responsibility and solutions (safety net)
Exclusion	Limited inclusion	Inclusion

Of the various types of speakers, many of the housing advocates who appeared in news coverage explicitly spoke about housing justice and racial equity. One Boston-area advocate pointed out that a coming eviction crisis would “disproportionately impact communities of color,”³⁴ while a representative from the Los Angeles-based Enterprise Community Partners, concluded that “low-income neighborhoods of color will need a lot more aid to prevent further gentrification and economic devastation.”³⁵ Across the board, speakers were quoted using technical terms or jargon like “linkage restrictions,”³⁶  or “safe sleep zones,”³⁷ or contained poorly defined terms or ambiguous phrases like “affordable housing” or “housing provider” (16% of articles).

Journalists may not use these terms, but the themes we see in our news analysis often parallel the narrative techniques that are deeply ingrained in fiction writing, with conflict, setting, characters, point of view, and other common story elements. Below we explore how several key “characters” appeared in the coverage:

Government actors are called upon to address housing problems. 

We know from decades of media research that news about many issues commonly focuses on problems, rather than on solutions.³⁸ The news about housing, equity, and health is unique in that many stories (96%) named a specific solution to at least one housing issue like homelessness or lack of affordable housing. Many solutions centered on government action like increases in funding (39% of all references to solutions) or changes to state, local, or federal housing policy (34% of references to solutions). An op-ed from The Boston Globe, for example, called for “$30 billion for national housing rent and mortgage assistance,”³¹ and an article from the Los Angeles Times addressed the debate over a series of state-level policies designed to protect renters as part of a “sweeping economic recovery effort” in California.³⁹

We also documented all explicit calls to act on housing issues and found that responsibility was regularly laid at the feet of local, state, or federal government entities (80% of all assertions of responsibility). A typical article from The Arizona Republic called on “state lawmakers [to] take action to restore the state investment to the housing trust fund and enact new tools like a state affordable housing tax.”⁴⁰ Similarly, an op-ed from The Philadelphia Inquirer urged “the members of City Council to rally behind [legislation to protect renters] as a first step in rebuilding the fabric of our beautiful city.”³²

When government entities failed to act on housing, they were sometimes swiftly taken to task, as when a YIMBY housing advocate (see Figure 6) sternly rebuked the California Legislature for “its refusal to pass a housing production package that addresses the depths of the housing shortage,” saying that it “failed the people of California.”³⁹  A Minneapolis resident, meanwhile, denounced city and state government as being “either indifferent or incapable of finding a long-term solution,” and concluded “a turn to the private sector is necessary.”⁴¹

Landlords and tenants are portrayed at odds.

The news regularly framed tenants and landlords as being against one another and boiled the complexities of housing policy down to a “he said-she-said” format. Reporters often portrayed landlords as struggling due to unreasonable or untrustworthy tenants: For example, the head of an organization representing California landlords argued that pandemic protections should be subject to means-testing because of his organization’s assertion that “there are some [tenants] who have taken advantage”⁴² of the laws. Similarly, an article from Atlanta highlighted the remarks of a judge who warned tenants that COVID-related financial hardship, while a “legitimate reason for not paying rent,” is “no fault of the landlord,”⁴³ even as rent relief legislation went to landlords and helped them as well. 

Other articles framed landlords as reasonable and fair actors fighting unreasonable policies that prioritize tenants. One Los Angeles Times article quoted the head of the California Rental Housing Association, who acknowledged that “renters that have been adversely affected by COVID-19” but concluded that policies extending eviction moratoriums would “lead to more harm throughout the rental housing industry and California’s economy.”⁴⁴ Such “scarcity framing,” which reinforces the idea that when one group benefits another must lose,⁴⁵ was common in articles that pitted landlords against tenants. By contrast, we seldom saw stories that framed policies to expand housing resources as a win for all. A rare example came from an article in which a representative speaking for Washington state landlords described legislation to provide legal counsel for tenants as “[providing] value to tenants and to landlords because it helps to resolve cases more quickly.”⁴⁶

A number of articles framed landlords as unscrupulous and harmful to tenants as when one renter observed, “My landlord knows that the rental market is in his favor; he can behave in an egregious manner without serious repercussions.”⁴⁷ An editorial from The Philadelphia Inquirer denounced landlords for “[filing] 20,000 evictions a year … despite the devastatingly long list of harms associated with eviction,”¹⁷ and a community advocate in Orange County worried that landlords would exploit rent relief laws to “pick and choose the fate of [a tenant’s] life and whether or not they’re going to be saddled with thousands of dollars of debt.”³⁵

Unhoused people share personal stories that evoke pity and fear. 

Though unhoused people accounted for 15% of speakers in the news (and were most often quoted in articles from The Seattle Times and The Philadelphia Inquirer), the news did not quote unhoused people speaking as experts on the issues facing their communities or tying their experiences to needed solutions. Instead, most unhoused people in the news told vivid personal stories about their own struggles. A typical story profiled an unhoused Oakland man who described “sleeping here and there, worried about catching coronavirus,”⁴⁸ while an unhoused person in Los Angeles described struggles with addiction, saying, “It always felt to me like I’d fallen off a fire escape, and once you get on the ground, the ladder is 12 feet up in the air … I always thought, ‘If I could just get to that first step.’ But the first step is so far away.”³³

When they were spoken about, unhoused people were sometimes described using language that evoked fear, distrust, and kept the frame squarely focused on deficits and problems. One LA resident who lived across from a shelter complained that she “can’t take her mother for a walk and sleeps with a baseball bat,” and concluded, “I’m scared.”⁴⁹  Other stories about unhoused people evoked pity or helplessness: One adult unhoused Oakland resident, for example, was called “a sweet child” and a “victim of circumstance”⁴⁸ by housing center staff, while Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez described an unhoused woman as “barefoot, caked in dirt, may be pregnant and is often naked …” before declaring, “she is deteriorating before [neighbors’] eyes.⁵⁰ Other depictions of unhoused people focused on their resilience, as in an article from Philadelphia that described an unhoused man as “stoic” in the face of an uncertain future.⁵¹

Housing justice advocates and community leaders pull back the lens on inequities and local needs.

Housing justice advocates and community leaders often appeared in the news to provide important context in stories about housing, equity, and health. Many of the most overt statements about structural and systemic inequities came from housing advocates. In Seattle, for example, leaders from community group Equity Now denounced city leadership, arguing, “In a society that does not allow for upward social or economic mobility, our city refuses to provide the services and/or resources necessary for … clean, safe and stable housing, adequate food and sustenance, and security for all of its residents.”⁵² In St. Paul, Minnesota, meanwhile, a representative of the Rondo Community Land Trust pointed out that “the [housing] market continues to go up and incomes have not kept up for the families that we serve.”⁵³

Community leaders representing many different local organizations (including churches, neighborhood coalitions, and community centers) provided details and reactions that help illustrate the nuances and limitations of solutions to housing problems. For example, John Maceri, executive director of a nonprofit social service agency, expressed doubts about an initiative to rent hotel and motel rooms for temporary shelter, observing, “I don’t think it’s going to be anywhere near what’s going to be needed to fill in the gap.”⁵⁴ Similarly, the director of a neighborhood center in Miami described the logistical challenges facing residents seeking public housing support, expressing concern that “people who most need Section 8 won’t get help navigating the application process — or will get left behind because they don’t have internet access.”⁵⁵

Bringing it all together

Our analysis of news about housing, equity, and health revealed that during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, coverage explicitly connected housing to COVID-19. Most articles discussed the impact of the pandemic on existing disparities or called for changes to address housing instability as a way of preventing the spread of the virus and supporting vulnerable communities in their efforts to recover from the pandemic. Few stories connected housing to any other health outcome besides COVID.

Various characters, or sources, appeared in housing news against the backdrop of the pandemic, including landlords, tenants, unhoused people, and housing advocates. Many of these figures were framed in conflict with one another. The deepest divisions appeared between landlords and tenants, with both sides periodically accusing the other of duplicitous or unscrupulous behavior. This “he said-she said” format often flattens complex policy issues, their histories, and future impacts without the context that would help the public understand the need for equity-focused solutions and would hold policymakers accountable for enacting them.

Unhoused people were regularly quoted in the coverage, but most often only to share graphic details of their lived experience on the streets; rarely were they called upon to share their expertise about the housing crisis, or to advocate for solutions. Beyond engendering pity or fear, such narrow, individually focused stories potentially obscure the broader policy or historical landscape that could help readers understand why so many people are unhoused or set the stage for reporting on equity-focused solutions.

Government officials were also prominent figures in the coverage and were often called upon to address housing issues and rectify inequities: Indeed, most stories were in the news because of a milestone or breakthrough achieved in a policy, initiative, or program. News about housing is unusual in this respect because previous analyses of news about a number of issues have documented that coverage seldom evokes the role of government in solving problems. This pattern in coverage likely stems from the well-documented tension in the United States between the notion that health and well-being are shaped purely by personal choices and the belief that institutions, including government entities, also must act to protect the public’s health.^38,56

When racial justice and the relationship to housing and health equity were covered, reporters focused on disparate impacts or troubling data points, rather than describing solutions or quoting sources who could describe their vision for what housing and health could look like in their communities. Black, Indigenous, and other people of color were most often mentioned in statistics documenting inequities.

Recommendations for those working toward health equity and housing justice 

Our analysis of the news, an important part of our public discourse, reveals several ways advocates and practitioners working around the country could elevate the connections between housing, equity, and health in their public statements. With an eye toward filling those gaps, we present recommendations to aid advocates in improving news coverage on housing and building a new narrative that shines a light on the deep connections between housing, equity, and health to support policies that can ensure stable housing and good health for everyone.

Bring racial equity into the frame.

Every message is an opportunity to bring racial equity into the story. From social media to speaking to a reporter, a simple, tested message strategy is to include compelling values, a clear solution, and a very brief description of the problem (since news coverage often focuses more on the problem).

Action 1: Frame racial equity as part of the solution, not just the problem.

Reporters most often bring racial inequities into their stories when they describe housing problems using data, statistics, or stories of individuals who are suffering. Racial equity as a guiding vision for how housing policies can transform our communities appears less often; especially missing are descriptions of how innovative solutions that center communities of color also will benefit broader communities, cities, counties, and states. This means advocates need to explain not just what led to this dire situation, but also the outcomes they expect to see when equity-focused policies are adopted and enforced.

Action 2: Uplift Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) as leaders and experts.

News coverage of housing inequities often conveys how BIPOC communities have been harmed but less often describes the actions BIPOC communities are taking to proactively address housing issues. One way advocates can be sure racial equity is depicted as part of our vision for the future is by elevating BIPOC leadership (including youth leaders, people with disabilities, people who are unhoused, people who are immigrants, people who have been incarcerated, and more) as experts in news coverage of housing issues. There is ample opportunity for BIPOC leaders to be portrayed as policy experts, data and trend experts, or as advocates who are creating solutions that will reduce inequities and benefit the health of the city, county, region, or state. Showing how BIPOC leaders and organizations are successfully advocating for equity-focused housing solutions will demonstrate the range of assets these leaders bring that can benefit their community and beyond.⁵⁷ 

Related resources

In addition to bringing racial equity into the solution, advocates can tie racial equity to values in messages. Many recent housing narrative resources that incorporate racial equity are designed to help advocates be explicit about racial equity, build long-term narratives around it, and win:

• In the book The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together, Heather McGhee draws on the value of interconnectedness and provides numerous examples of how addressing structural racism can improve prosperity for all.
• The Race-Class Narrative Project provides research and examples that illustrate how the value of unity has been powerful in many different contexts and across various issues, including housing.
• Community Change, Race Forward, and PolicyLink also provide materials that center racial equity in housing narratives.
• BMSG has several resources that can help advocates connect narratives on racial equity to concrete action steps.

Recommendations for journalists

The news analysis revealed reporting gaps that, if addressed, could provide a fuller picture of housing and its relationship to equity and health. The following recommendations for reporters are designed to expand and deepen news coverage so that the public and policymakers will have a more complete picture of what could be done to bring a close to our nation’s housing crisis.

• Avoid using language that personifies the housing market. Doing so obscures the role of decision-makers, making it harder to hold them accountable and narrowing the range of possible solutions. Instead of describing the market as a natural force acting of its own volition (for example, by saying, “the housing market did …”), reporters can explain how policy decisions shape the market; they can name where the action originated by saying what elected officials, landlord or developer lobbies, advocates, or others decided to do.

• Expand who is considered an expert source. In many news articles, when reporters refer to trends or data to diagnose current problems or predict the future, they turn to the real estate lobby, think tanks, and other “experts” who provide specific indicators based on their own interests. Reporters could ask those most impacted by the housing crisis about their diagnosis of the problem and the solutions they favor. This fresh approach can also help journalists move away from “he said-she said” storytelling that focuses on interpersonal conflict between, for example, landlords and tenants.

• Address the long-term impact of immediate policy actions. Most stories about housing and health were in the news because of an action in the policy process. Consequently, despite their length and complexity, many articles about housing focused only on the policy details of short-term, transactional solutions disconnected from the long-term impact of those solutions. Reporters can ask their sources questions about the long-term vision of their work that will help them, even briefly, connect the larger, housing-related issues — those concerning health, equity, and community well-being —with the policy moment or action currently in the spotlight.

Closing thoughts

Recent polling shows that more people are acknowledging that we must collectively address the national housing crisis, even if they are uncertain of solutions.⁵⁸ Against that backdrop, this snapshot into national news about housing and health during COVID illustrates that there are promising areas of movement toward the goals of housing justice and racial and health equity in the U.S. For example, when they appear in the news, advocates can infuse stories with language about equity, government actors and actions are named, and articles about COVID make the link between housing and health visible, at least in terms of COVID outcomes.

The analysis also reveals opportunities to improve coverage and win concrete changes to improve people’s lives in terms of housing and health. Fortunately, we are in a moment when we know more about housing narratives than ever before. We can draw on both that research and real-world examples of advocates who are centering racial equity and winning. We can also look for guidance from leaders who are working to build movements and narratives across issues so that work on housing also uplifts efforts in many other sectors that are necessary to achieve true racial and health equity.^58-64

Social change, especially amid a global pandemic, can be hard to see and even harder to measure. But housing and health advocates are raising their voices, getting their issues in the news, shifting conversations, and ultimately changing the housing conditions that can either support health or be a barrier to thriving communities. With continued investment and support to implement the narrative-change recommendations outlined here, as well as others from recent housing narrative research, advocates will be well poised to continue to build momentum and effect concrete change toward the goal of making homes and health a reality for all.

Acknowledgments

This report was written by Pamela Mejia, MS, MPH; Kim Garcia, MPH; Sarah Perez-Sanz, MPH; Katherine Schaff, DrPH; and Lori Dorfman, DrPH. Special thanks to Kim Garcia and Sarah Perez-Sanz for lending their data analysis expertise to this project. Additional thanks to Heather Gehlert for copy editing.

Many thanks to The Kresge Foundation for funding this project.

Appendix

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