Healthy Housing Workforce Toolkit
Many municipalities are under-resourced and overstretched. Creating new partnerships and strengthening existing relationships can help alleviate the burden of building a program single-handedly. Through partnerships, municipalities can:
- Receive additional input from community and interest groups that may have been previously neglected.
- Better understand community challenges and barriers.
- Leverage additional funding sources to help resources go farther.
- Educate and improve awareness around healthy housing programs, practices, and policies.
Municipalities should leverage all available potential partners to ensure that their approach to designing and implementing a healthy housing workforce incorporates a diverse collection of external and internal stakeholders. By partnering with employers, labor organizations, health providers, and other stakeholders, local governments can make a real impact in creating a workforce pipeline that supports healthy housing programs.16 Collaborating with educational institutions, such as community colleges, can provide training and credentialing programs that can prepare individuals to address workforce needs in your community.
Internal partnerships across existing departments can be just as valuable as the connections made with external stakeholders. Implementing changes in policy often requires crossing internal administrative boundaries. Ensuring collaboration across various departments within local governments can reduce future barriers and ensure there is a coordinated approach to developing a workforce pipeline.
Tools and Resources
These partnership engagement tools include marketing strategies, messaging tips, checklists, and frameworks for municipalities to understand how to develop new and existing partnerships.
NLC has shared strategies for successful partnerships17 that you can review to ensure that your partnerships are sustainable and aligned with your goals. Additionally, NLC’s multi-sector stakeholder engagement series18 shares lessons learned from municipal-level healthy housing efforts from across the country to help support local leaders in their work to improve housing conditions in their communities. The series explores strategies for local leaders to engage local health stakeholders, community interests, and ways policymakers can support innovative housing quality practices.
Health providers and agencies can be effective partners due to their close connections with individuals and communities. The National Library of Medicine has published a scoping review that shows how health providers can support intersectional partnerships between local governments and health organizations. The publication includes a framework for creating these partnerships.19 As a part of their ConnectHomesUSA Partnership20, the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) provides numerous resources and tools that can guide cities as they develop and strengthen their local partnerships on HUD Exchange.21 These tools include:
- Partnership Building Checklist (PDF)22
- Partner Communication Strategy Guide (PDF)23
- Stakeholder Mapping Template (PDF)24
- Sample Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) (PDF)25
- HUD’s Healthy Homes Program Guidance Manual Chapter 2 (PDF)26
The Urban Institute provides numerous resources and guides that identify strategies for Fostering Partnerships for Community Engagement (PDF).27 Based on previous experiences, Urban Institute has identified the four core principles of a Good Partnership:
- Develop an understanding of the community grounded in its history, issues, and people.
- Create Equity to support community-engaged methods.
- Commit to transparency to understand partner’s needs and the value they offer.
- Build and maintain trust.
Urban Institute’s Toolkit for Partnership, Collaboration, and Action28
End Notes
16 “How Cities Can Grow the Building Retrofit Workforce.”
17 “Three Strategies for Successful Partnerships.”
18 “Resource Series.”
19 Yashadhana et al., “Intersectoral Partnerships Between Local Governments and Health Organisations in High-Income Contexts.”
20 “ConnectHomeUSA Partnership Building Toolkit.”
21 “ConnectHomeUSA Partnership Building Toolkit.”
22 “ConnectHomeUSA-Playbook-Partnership-Building-Toolkit-and-Checklist.Pdf.”
23 “ConnectHomeUSA-Playbook-Partner-Communication-Strategy-Guide.Pdf.”
24 “ConnectHomeUSA-Playbook-Partnership-Building-Stakeholder-Mapping-Template.Pdf.”
25 “ConnectHomeUSA-Playbook-Partnership-Building-Sample-Memorandum-of-Understanding.Pdf.”
26 HHPGM_FINAL_CH2.Pdf.”
27 Spinner, “Fostering Partnerships for Community Engagement.”
28 Webb, “Engaging Your Community: A Toolkit for Partnership, Collaboration, and Action.”