Examining state health and habitability laws and their relationship to state characteristics in the USA

Nate Horwitz-Willis, Martha Phillips, Kevin Ryan, Zoran Bursac and Alesia Ferguson

International Journal of Housing Policy, 2018, vol. 18, issue 4, 568-594

Abstract: A variety of health conditions such as asthma, elevated blood lead levels (BLLs) in children, pesticide poisonings, and falls and trips injuries have been associated with substandard housing conditions, implying that improvement in housing can lead to improved health. This group of researchers previously developed and reported on a Habitability Element Rating Scores (HERS) to compare and rank the strength of habitability laws of US states. HERS considers a State's adoption of elements of Uniform Landlord and Tenant Act (URLTA) for upkeep of property (i.e., raw scores), and the potential of elements to influence tenant health (i.e., weighted scores). Here we examine the relationship of HERS raw scores with various state political and demographic features to investigate potential driving forces for the development/existence of comprehensive and equitable housing standards. Statistically significant associations reveal states tend to emphasise low or high HERS raw scores depending on factors such as rurality and the proportion of a state's legislative body, which indicates its political party affiliation. The group of states with moderately strong laws (n = 11) also tended to be Southern states, with concomitantly higher proportions of minorities in the state, female renters heading the household, and renters living in poverty.

Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/19491247.2017.1386387 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:intjhp:v:18:y:2018:i:4:p:568-594

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/REUJ20

DOI: 10.1080/19491247.2017.1386387

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Housing Policy is currently edited by Professor Suzanne Fitzpatrick, Gerard van Bortel and Richard Ronald

More articles in International Journal of Housing Policy from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().