Local governments and nonprofit partners have long operated home repair programs to help low-income homeowners address critical housing maintenance needs. As housing shortages have intensified across the country, these programs are receiving renewed attention as critical components of local strategies to expand and retain affordable housing. Increasingly, cities are looking to better coordinate and scale local home repair services and integrate them into broader housing strategies aimed at improving affordability, stabilizing neighborhoods, and preserving wealth among low-income homeowners – particularly homeowners of color. In doing so, many are confronting long-standing challenges, as existing home repair systems are often under-resourced, highly fragmented, and administratively complex.
This brief provides an overview of the role home repair programs for owner-occupied homes play in local housing markets, how these programs operate, the key challenges they face, and emerging approaches to improve service delivery and make more strategic use of limited resources. It draws on the existing evidence about home repair programs, insights from over 40 programs administered by 14 local governments and their partners participating in the Lab’s Home Repair Community of Practice (Community of Practice), and lessons surfaced through two years of peer learning sessions and technical assistance with participant cities.
14 cities and counties and 41 programs: A snapshot of local home repair programs
The Home Repair Program Scan examines 41 home repair programs across 14 cities and counties that participate in the Housing Solutions Lab’s Home Repair Community of Practice, highlighting service models, eligibility and selection criteria, and partnership structures. Community of Practice participants include Atlanta, Austin, Baltimore, Chicago, Denver, Detroit, Jacksonville, Kansas City, Louisville, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, San Antonio, Chesterfield County (VA), and Henrico County (VA).
Considered together, our work with cities suggests that local home repair programs face a common set of challenges: available funding falls far short of need and is often constrained by federal requirements; services are fragmented across multiple small programs and providers; cities lack the data and information needed to strategically target scarce resources and measure outcomes; and repair investments are not always integrated into broader housing preservation and community development strategies.
The cities in the Lab’s Community of Practice are responding to these challenges by diversifying and blending funding when possible, improving coordination and data capacity across stakeholders and programs, and more intentionally aligning home repair programs with local priorities, such as preserving affordable homeownership, preventing displacement, or supporting aging in place. Together, these approaches can help communities make more strategic use of limited resources and position home repair as an integral tool in advancing local housing goals.
Why home repair matters
The U.S. housing stock is aging and includes millions of homes in need of substantial repair. In 2023, the median age of the housing stock in U.S. cities was 44 years,[1] with nearly 7 million households living in housing defined as moderately or severely inadequate by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).[2] This group included roughly 3 million homeowners and 4 million renters. As of 2024, occupied housing units across the United States required an estimated $200 billion in repairs, nearly $75 billion of which was needed in homes occupied by lower-income households.[3]
Unaddressed repair and maintenance needs can pose substantial health and financial risk for residents. Research has linked poor housing quality to worse health outcomes and increased healthcare utilization in U.S. adults.[4] For example, homes built before 1976 may contain lead-based paint that poses serious developmental risks for children, while mold, pests, and inadequate ventilation can contribute to respiratory illnesses such as asthma. Structural deficiencies, faulty wiring, and inadequate heating or lighting can also increase the risk of injury, while poor housing conditions may contribute to chronic stress, sleep disruption, and social isolation. Deferred maintenance may also accelerate the need for costly emergency repairs and, over time, worsen housing conditions. This deterioration can erode household wealth by depressing property values and limiting owners’ ability to borrow against or sell their homes.
At the same time, many lower-income homeowners struggle with rising costs of home insurance, property taxes, utilities, and home maintenance costs, while having limited access to credit or home equity loans to finance repairs.[5] These challenges are particularly acute in low- and moderate-income neighborhoods, where applicants for private home improvement loans — and homeowners of color in particular — experience disproportionately high denial rates.[6]
Older homes also compound these burdens. Aging housing stock tends to be less energy-efficient, resulting in higher utility costs and unreliable heating or cooling, while outdated electrical systems, failing roofs, poor insulation, and inadequate drainage can leave homes more vulnerable to damage. As climate change makes extreme heat, flooding, and severe weather events more common, these vulnerabilities become more pronounced, making repairs more urgent and expensive while further limiting homeowners’ ability to retrofit their homes.
Notably, disrepair is concentrated in communities shaped by historic racial and economic exclusion, where decades of disinvestment and limited access to credit and capital make home maintenance more difficult. As a result, the consequences of housing deterioration are not evenly distributed. Lower-income households and Black and Hispanic residents – particularly children and older adults – are disproportionately exposed to substandard housing,[7] with low-income, older Black women more likely to live in housing with unmet repair needs they cannot afford.[8],[9],[10]
For many lower-income homeowners – particularly Black homeowners who have faced systemic barriers to homeownership and access to credit – the home is also a primary source of household wealth. Home equity accounts for 89 percent of the net worth of Black homeowners over age 62 nationally, compared with 47 percent of the net worth of older white homeowners.[11] When repair needs go unaddressed, households may face declining property values, mounting costs, and eventual loss of the home – undermining both housing stability and families’ ability to transfer wealth across generations. Home repair assistance can therefore be an important component of efforts to preserve Black wealth and address racial disparities in housing.
Older homeowners, people with disabilities[12] and very low-income households are also more likely to live in homes with significant repair needs and lack the resources needed to maintain them.[13] For example, a study of older homeowners in Boston, MA, found that aging households often reduced maintenance spending despite living in homes with higher rates of structural deficiencies.[14]
Housing disrepair can also have significant neighborhood and city-level consequences. Sustained deterioration can contribute to housing abandonment, declining property values, and increased vacancy. As homes become uninhabitable, neighborhoods may enter cycles of disinvestment that discourage private investment and concentrate poverty. At the city level, the gradual loss of aging housing units can exacerbate housing shortages and offset gains in new housing production, increase pressure on rental markets, and reduce municipal tax revenue. Repairing aging homes is typically far less costly than replacing lost units through new construction,[15] making the preservation of existing housing an important component of local efforts to increase housing supply.
What we know about the effectiveness of home repair programs
A growing body of research suggests that home repair assistance can improve health outcomes, support housing stability, and help low-income homeowners remain safely housed.
For example, in the Highline community of King County, WA, a quasi-experimental study tested the effects of combining weatherization with in-home education. The results showed that the share of children with poorly controlled asthma residing in those homes declined substantially while caregiver quality of life improved.[16] Similarly, an evaluation of the Whole-Home Repairs Program in Allegheny County, PA, found that after receiving comprehensive home repairs, more than half of participants reported improvements in mental health, over 40 percent reported better sleep, and nearly one-third saw improvements in their physical health.[17]
Home repair assistance may also help stabilize households and reduce the risk of displacement by allowing low-income households to maintain their homes. For example, one-quarter of participants in Detroit’s Make It Home repair program reported they would not have remained in their homes without access to repair assistance.[18] In Allegheny County, half of all program applicants reported they could not afford a minor $600 emergency repair, despite inspections suggesting their homes required substantial, system-level improvements.[19] State and local programs aim to interrupt this cycle of deterioration and displacement risk. North Carolina’s Urgent Repair Program, for example, prioritizes repairs that pose an “imminent threat of displacement.” The program’s evaluators estimate that emergency repairs could generate substantial health care system savings by enabling residents to remain safely housed rather than enter long-term care facilities at significant cost to public health care systems.[20]
Home repair investments may also generate broader neighborhood benefits, although the evidence remains limited. An analysis of Boston’s Senior Home Repair Program found that repair investments are often concentrated in neighborhoods with high rates of housing-condition complaints, suggesting that repair programs can function as place-based interventions.[21] Research on the Basic Systems Repair Program for owner-occupied homes in Philadelphia, PA, found that structural repairs were associated with statistically significant reductions in nearby gun violence.[22]
While the evidence base on these programs is growing, important gaps remain. Few studies follow participants over time to examine long-term outcomes such as housing stability, wealth preservation, aging in place, or intergenerational wealth transfer. Existing research also focuses primarily on household-level impacts, with far less evidence on neighborhood-scale or citywide effects. Measuring these broader impacts is challenging because repair programs often operate alongside other public, private, and nonprofit investments, making it difficult to isolate their independent effects. In addition, home repair assistance is delivered through networks of discrete local programs, and there are no comprehensive national or local data sources to track the universe of local repair investments and outcomes across providers and funding streams. As a result, policymakers have limited rigorous evidence about the long-term returns on home repair investments and the extent to which these programs contribute to broader community stability and neighborhood revitalization.
How home repair programs work and their key challenges
This section describes common approaches to providing local home repair services, including funding and administrative models. It also highlights common challenges that programs face and that can hinder their effectiveness. References to specific program models and examples are drawn from our scan and analysis of programs administered by participants in the Community or Practice, as well as from publicly available information on home repair programs nationally.
Home repair service models
Local governments typically provide financial assistance to homeowners for home repair services in two ways: they provide grants for small or moderate repairs and/or low-cost loans (whether deferred, forgivable or not) for more substantial improvements. Our scan shows that cities often offer grants valued at less than $25,000–$30,000, and rely on loan-based models for larger rehabilitation projects. Regardless of the financing model used, programs must balance the competing goals of serving as many households as possible and addressing the full scope of repair needs facing a given home. As a result, some programs prioritize smaller, targeted repairs that allow them to serve more households, while others invest in more comprehensive rehabilitation projects that serve fewer homeowners but may produce more impactful and durable results.
Many of these grant and forgivable loan programs require homeowners to remain in their homes for a specified period after repairs are completed. Deferred and forgivable loans generally require no monthly payments while the homeowner occupies the property; instead, a lien is placed on the home and the loan balance is forgiven over time, often over a period of 10 to 20 years. Larger rehabilitation investments typically carry longer residency requirements.
Programs typically address three broad categories of repairs:
- Critical repairs to roofs, foundations, electrical, and plumbing systems
- Emergency repairs to address urgent health and safety concerns, such as loss of heat or severe roof leaks
- Minor repairs such as accessibility upgrades, front steps, gutters, or facade improvements
Within each category of repairs, programs vary widely in scope — from single-system fixes (e.g., a furnace replacement) to more comprehensive “whole home” interventions that address multiple deficiencies beyond basic standards of habitability. While the latter is recognized as a best practice, it is uncommon due to overall funding constraints and administrative complexity when blending resources. Some cities also offer weatherization or energy retrofit programs in tandem with home repairs.
Eligibility and targeting
While cities share a broad goal of directing scarce home repair resources to households with the greatest need, they achieve that goal through a range of eligibility criteria and selection processes. Virtually all home repair programs have income requirements – most commonly at or below 80 percent of the Area Median Income (AMI). Homeowners must also provide a clear title to the property, verify home insurance coverage, and be up to date on mortgage and property tax payments. Some programs may target households with lower incomes, as is the case in Chicago, IL, which serves residents earning less than 50 percent AMI.
Beyond initial income requirements, our scan shows that many programs target households with older adults, persons with disabilities, or households with children. Some programs then rely on a random selection lottery or a “first come, first served” waiting list to select applicants. Others prioritize households based on geographic location, length of neighborhood tenure, or the urgency of repair needs within a home. Chicago, Atlanta, GA, and Louisville, KY have programs that target residents in specific geographic areas and consider factors such as historic redlining, environmental justice concerns, and neighborhood displacement risk.
Nearly all programs limit eligibility to owner-occupants of single-family homes or duplexes, although some cities are beginning to offer repair assistance to small landlords, recognizing rising costs and the growing maintenance needs among the nation’s aging rental stock. Philadelphia’s Rental Improvement Fund, for example, offers forgivable loans to landlords with fewer than 15 rental units spread across up to five properties. Units repaired through this fund must remain affordable to households earning 60 percent AMI for 10 to 15 years.
Many cities maintain waiting lists of hundreds, or sometimes thousands, of eligible applicants as they wait for additional resources or capacity to complete repairs, or while applicants move through the approval process. Some households may wait for years to receive assistance due to such high demand. Within the first 24 hours of launching the $20 million Detroit Home Repair Fund pilot, the hotline received 120,000 calls inquiring about the program, which was designed to support only 1,000 households. Roughly 10,000 applicants competed for 250-500 slots in Chicago’s Home Repair Program in a single year.
Administrative complexity and fragmentation
A defining feature of local home repair ecosystems is their fragmented nature. Multiple programs may serve similar populations within a given jurisdiction while advancing different goals, priorities, and funding requirements. Results from our scan suggest that service delivery models and stakeholders vary widely: some cities manage programs and provide services directly to households, while others contract with multiple non-profit organizations to coordinate various aspects of outreach, intake, and eligibility determinations, and to complete repairs. The 2024 Detroit Home Repair Census, an initiative to better understand the home repair needs and provider landscape throughout the city, identified more than 30 programs run by the city and national, regional, and local nonprofit providers. These programs collectively completed over 3,000 home repairs in over 2,600 homes.
The Lab’s scan suggests that many programs are small: roughly two-thirds served fewer than 300 households per year. While small programs can be tailored to meet specific household or property needs, having a collection of small, separately administered programs run by many providers can be complex for households or providers to navigate, making coordination challenging.
In most cases, large home repair ecosystems lack a coordinating agency or shared data infrastructure to track applications, participants, completed repairs, or investments across providers. This can create confusion and administrative burdens for both residents and program administrators. Households may apply to several programs for the same repair needs, submit applications to programs for which they are ineligible, or encounter inconsistent application processes or eligibility requirements. At the same time, program administrators may have limited visibility into services provided by other organizations, leading to duplication, inefficiencies, and missed opportunities for collaboration.
Between 2022 and 2024, for example, 19 percent of properties (762 households) receiving assistance in Louisville received repairs on more than one occasion, with 402 properties served by multiple providers. While receiving services through multiple providers may have appropriately addressed different critical repair needs, streamlining services could help reduce overall costs and ensure services are complementary.
Fragmentation can also make it difficult for cities to understand the full scale of local repair needs, coordinate investments, or evaluate the cumulative impact of home repair spending at the household, neighborhood, or city level.
Funding
Federal Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) dollars are the most common funding source for municipal home repair programs. Nationally, home repair accounted for one-sixth of all CDBG funding in FY2023, with jurisdictions spending $478 million to rehabilitate 35,000 single-family homes.[23] Programs also receive funding from a variety of federal sources, including the HOME Investment Partnerships Program (HOME), Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP), Title I Property Improvement Loan Program, 203(k) Rehabilitation Mortgage Insurance Program, and Lead Hazard Reduction Grant Program.
The 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act brought additional short-term, flexible infusions of federal discretionary dollars to home repair programs. Notably, the Pennsylvania legislature made a one-time allocation of $125 million in ARPA funds for counties through the state’s Whole-Home Repairs Program. This funding not only allowed for more households to receive assistance, but also gave the program flexibility to address multiple or more comprehensive repair needs within individual households.
Federal funding typically carries stringent regulatory and reporting requirements – with implications for how services are delivered. For example, $24,999 is often the maximum per-household expenditure for CDBG-funded home repair programs, since more extensive repairs trigger HUD’s lead abatement threshold and require more costly abatement methods. Because most programs rely heavily on CDBG funds, programs commonly limit themselves to this level of repair services. Repairs valued at less than $25,000 may be critically important to improving home conditions, but often fall short of achieving a fully code-compliant, safe, and healthy home. The challenge for programs is therefore not only that federal resources are insufficient to fund the full scope of work needed to make homes safe, healthy, and durable, but also that the dominant federal sources limit cities’ flexibility to tailor assistance to local needs.
Emerging strategies for strengthening local home repair systems
Considered together, our direct work with cities and analysis of home repair programs nationally point to four common barriers that can limit the effectiveness and scale of local efforts. These barriers are also the focus of emerging reform strategies among participants in the Lab’s Community of Practice: expanding and diversifying funding; improving system-wide coordination; strengthening data capacity to better assess needs, target investments, and measure outcomes; and integrating home repair into broader housing preservation and community development strategies.
Expanding and diversifying funding
Available funding is insufficient to meet the scale of local repair needs, and heavy reliance on federal funding can constrain program design and service delivery options. While federal funding remains the backbone of most home repair programs, many cities are pursuing additional state, local, and philanthropic funding to reach more households and provide more flexible services. Braiding funding sources can also enable programs to move beyond small, single-system fixes, such as roof repairs, and toward more comprehensive “whole-home” interventions.
Given this reality, cities have looked to local, nonprofit, and philanthropic funding sources to help expand program capacity and allow greater flexibility. Local home repair providers may receive funds from local or national nonprofit organizations such as Rebuilding Together or Habitat for Humanity, or from philanthropic organizations. Over the last decade, JPMorganChase, the Wells Fargo Foundation, and Lowe’s have all made significant investments in programs in select cities.
A growing number of cities are also leveraging local revenue sources, such as general obligation bonds or housing trust funds, to sustain and expand home repair programs. For example, voters in Austin and San Antonio, TX, approved general obligation bonds to support large-scale, citywide home repair investments at $28 and $45 million, respectively. The City of Philadelphia supports its home repair programs by combining $40 million in local bond funding with dollars from the local housing trust fund.
Some cities, such as Louisville, have also established loan programs with a community lender or community development financial institution (CDFI), or with private market lenders to increase access to home improvement funds for low- and moderate-income homeowners with equity in their homes. These partnerships with community lenders are providing expanded access to low-cost financing for homeowners who may not qualify for traditional credit.
Improving system-wide coordination
Fragmentation and limited system-wide coordination can increase administrative burdens and make it difficult for providers to target resources strategically. In response, a growing number of local governments are launching initiatives to align assistance across programs and partners through centralized intake and eligibility screening processes. Rather than requiring homeowners to navigate multiple programs and applications, centralized intake can streamline access to services, improve the matching of household needs with available resources, reduce burdens for households and program administrators, and help providers coordinate investments.
For example, the Philadelphia Energy Authority’s Built to Last Program established a single intake and screening process across multiple providers, allowing the city to prioritize projects and direct households to the most appropriate resources. Baltimore, MD’s Housing Upgrades to Benefit Seniors (HUBS) program similarly provides a centralized intake system, offering a single application for repairs, accessibility upgrades, and weatherization services. San Antonio has collaborated with trusted community organizations, such as Meals on Wheels, who are already providing in-home assistance to homeowners, to assist with completing applications for city home repair programs. As part of a pilot program, the City has been prioritizing these nonprofit-assisted applications during household selection.
In parallel, cities – such as St. Louis, MO, and Detroit, MI – are establishing local “home repair networks” that bring together service providers, funders, legal partners, health organizations, and other stakeholders to establish shared goals, coordinate investments, and expand overall system capacity. These networks can help reduce duplication, identify service gaps, and create opportunities for joint fundraising and system-level planning.
Finally, some cities have launched programs or are working with organizations that address barriers to participation in repair programs or support the longevity of repairs. Because repair needs are often intertwined with legal, financial, health, and maintenance challenges, partnerships with service providers can improve both access to home repair assistance and long-term outcomes from repair investments. For example, programs in Philadelphia and Jacksonville, FL, connect participants with legal assistance to resolve tangled title and heirs’ property issues, while Detroit‘s Life and Legacy Planning Program provides referrals for estate planning services. Participants in San Antonio are offered homeowner education on long-term home maintenance. In other cities, public utilities, health departments, and other local partners may contribute funding, referrals, or complementary services. These partnerships can help households address underlying challenges that may otherwise limit their ability to access or benefit from home repair assistance.
Strengthening data capacity
Many home repair ecosystems lack a shared data infrastructure necessary to inform program design and resource allocation decisions. Because home repair funding falls far short of need, providers face difficult decisions about which households or neighborhoods to prioritize. Yet most communities lack detailed information on the scale and nature of local repair needs, characteristics of households being served, or how needs and outcomes may vary by population, neighborhood, or property type – making it difficult to target resources strategically.
In response, some cities are strengthening their data capacity by investing in improved data collection and sharing information across programs. These efforts include conducting citywide home repair needs assessments, capturing more comprehensive information about households served systemwide, and sharing data across local providers – in some cases informally, and in others more systematically. For example, Detroit’s Home Repair Census and Louisville’s Home Repair Needs Assessment each include detailed insights into local repair needs, housing conditions, and program performance. Louisville has developed detailed program performance metrics based on its needs assessment findings. Early outcomes suggest its recently adopted shared intake system has helped it serve more households and avoid duplication of services.
Integrating home repair into local housing and community development strategies
When home repair ecosystems are fragmented and administratively complex, they can be perceived within the housing sector as isolated efforts to help individual households, rather than potential tools for advancing broader housing preservation and community development goals. By aligning repair investments with broader city priorities, program leaders can focus program coordination efforts around a unifying policy objective and ensure limited resources are used where they can have the greatest impact.
A growing number of cities are integrating repair investments into broader local efforts to preserve affordable homeownership and protect long-term, low-income homeowners. These cities aim to help residents remain in their homes, build wealth, stabilize neighborhoods that have experienced historic disinvestment, facilitate aging in place, and reduce low-income residents’ exposure to health hazards. For example, Baltimore elevates home repair as part of its Vacancy Reduction Plan, coordinating home repair investments with broader neighborhood and “whole block” approaches to stabilizing legacy homeowners and addressing vacancy. Groundwork Jacksonville has launched a home repair program for homeowners particularly vulnerable to frequent storms and flooding events, and who are at risk of displacement while a new recreational trail is developed. Finally, Philadelphia has launched its Housing Opportunities Made Easy (H.O.M.E) plan, which includes home repair investments as part of a seven-point strategy to create and preserve 30,000 housing units.
By connecting home repair services to local housing preservation and community development strategies, cities can target limited resources in ways that help advance local priorities.
Conclusion
Home repair programs are an important but under-resourced – and frequently under-recognized – component of local housing ecosystems. As the nation’s housing stock ages and affordability pressures intensify, preserving existing homes is essential to maintaining housing supply and increasing affordability. Home repair programs can be useful in advancing a range of housing preservation objectives, yet they are often not deployed strategically to advance broader local housing goals.
The experiences of cities that participated in the Lab’s Community of Practice suggest that strengthening these systems will require a combination of additional resources, more coordinated service delivery, stronger data infrastructure, and more intentional integration with broader housing and community development strategies. Federal funding will continue to play a central role in home repair services, but a combination of state, local, and philanthropic investments will be critical to building more flexible and effective home repair systems better equipped to meet the scale of need.
Conducting a local needs assessment or convening a home repair network can provide a practical starting point for bringing together providers, funders, lenders, or other partners to map existing services, identify unmet needs and coordination gaps, and establish shared local goals. That foundation can support more coordinated intake and service delivery, shared data systems, joint fundraising capacity, and more strategic targeting of repair investments over time. Building data and evaluation capacity across the local home repair ecosystem will also help practitioners and policymakers assess the long-term impact of home repair investments on low-income homeowners and neighborhoods.
Additional resources
Home Mortgage Explorer. Created by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, this tool provides lending estimates produced from publicly accessible Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) data. Use the tool to explore disparities in private lending for homeowner repairs across applicant characteristics.
Catalyzing a movement to produce greater public, private, and civil resources to improve housing conditions through home repair programs. This 2024 paper by the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University explores how home repair stakeholders and resources can be better aligned to achieve greater impact.
Footnotes
[1] Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University. (2025a). Improving America’s housing 2025.
[2] American Housing Survey. (2021). American Housing Survey 2021. U.S. Census Bureau.
[3] Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. (2025). Home repair costs 2025: Updated estimates and new measures of cooling needs.
[4] Boch, S., Taylor, D., Danielson, M., Chisolm, D., & Kelleher, K. (2020). Home is where the health is: Housing quality and adult health outcomes in the Survey of Income and Program Participation. Preventive Medicine, 132, Article 105990.
[5] Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University. (2025b). Rising costs of homeownership are a growing burden.
[6] Urban Institute. (2022). What different denial rates can tell us about racial disparities in the mortgage market.
[7] Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University. (2024). Catalyzing a movement to produce greater public, private, and civil resources to improve housing conditions through home repair programs.
[8] Bartram, R. (2023). Routine dilapidation: How homeownership creates environmental injustice. City & Community, 22(4), 266–285.
[9] Bashir, S. A. (2022). Home is where the harm is: Inadequate housing as a public health crisis: American Journal of Public Health, 2002. In E. J. Mueller (Ed.), The affordable housing reader (2nd ed., pp. 123–129). Routledge.
[10] Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University. (2023). Housing America’s older adults 2023. Harvard University.
[11] Urban Institute. (n.d.). Expanding access to home equity could improve financial security for older homeowners.
[12] Lindsay, S., & Adams, T. (2024). Accessible independent housing for people with disabilities: A scoping review. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 21(1), Article 10810508.
[13] Wedeen, S. (2023, August 1). Greater assistance needed to combat the persistence of substandard housing. Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University.
[14] Begley, J., & Lambie-Hanson, L. (2015). The home maintenance and improvement behaviors of older adults in Boston. Housing Policy Debate, 25(4), 754–781.
[15] Solari, C., Stacy, C., & Chen, B. (2025). Building more homes isn’t enough to solve the housing crisis. Urban Institute.
[16] Breysse, J., et al. (2014). Effect of weatherization combined with community health worker in-home education on asthma control. American Journal of Public Health, 104(1), e57–e64.
[17] Marrs, C., et al. (2025). Repair needs among low-income homeowners in Allegheny County. Housing Initiative at Penn.
[18] Eisenberg, A., Wakayama, C., & Cooney, P. (2021). Reinforcing low-income homeownership through home repair: Evaluation of the Make It Home Repair program. Poverty Solutions at the University of Michigan.
[19] Marrs, C., et al. (2025). Repair needs among low-income homeowners in Allegheny County. Housing Initiative at Penn.
[20] North Carolina Housing Finance Agency. (2017). Urgent home repair: Quality of life and cost impacts.
[21] Begley, J., & Lambie-Hanson, L. (2015). The home maintenance and improvement behaviors of older adults in Boston. Housing Policy Debate, 25(4), 754–781.
[22] South, E., MacDonald, J., & Reina, V. (2021). Association between structural housing repairs for low-income homeowners and neighborhood crime. JAMA Network Open, 4(7), Article e2117067.
[23] Martin, C., & Mayes, T. (2022, October 13). Home repair programs serve critical needs of low-income and vulnerable homeowners. Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University.