The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) kicked off activities for this year’s National Healthy Homes Month (NHHM), an annual campaign highlighting the direct link between housing quality and residents’ health, on June 1. NHHM serves to educate families and communities about the importance of creating and maintaining a healthy home by addressing home-based hazards, including reducing moisture and mold, improving ventilation, controlling pests, and maintaining indoor air quality, HUD said in a press release.
This year’s theme of “connecting home, health, and you,” highlighted the link between housing quality and health, and was designed to raise awareness of the need to lower costs for families by preventing injury and illnesses, improving and preserving the supply of affordable housing, and improving the quality of life for vulnerable populations.
“This month (June), we are reminded that everyone in this country deserves to be safe and healthy in their homes,” HUD Secretary Marcia Fudge said in the release. “HUD and our many partners are working together to protect vulnerable residents from lead exposure and other home health hazards.”
A significant highlight of NHHM was the opening of the nomination process for the new HUD Secretary’s Award for Excellence in Healthy Homes. For the first time, the competition will select one recipient who best exemplifies the holistic approach required to create a healthy home culture.
As part of HUD’s commitment to ensure healthy homes, it recently announced two historic Notices of Funding Opportunities (NOFOs) that will make homes healthier and safer for low-income families.
The first NOFO provides over $700 million in grants to state and local governments for improving health and safety in privately-owned older (pre-1978) homes of low-income families under HUD’s Lead Hazard Reduction Grant Program, one of the largest health and safety investments to date for privately-owned housing.
The second NOFO provides $50 million to assist communities in building the capacity needed to operate a full-scale lead hazard control and healthy homes program, under HUD’s Lead Hazard Reduction Capacity Building Grant Program, a program developed in direct response to feedback from communities.
Additional funding opportunities, including the Healthy Homes Production Grant Program and the Older Adult Home Modification Grant Program, will be announced later.