The evening of February 10, 2025 was bitterly cold — temperatures dipped into the low-to-mid-teens across Detroit. Two children lost their lives to carbon monoxide poisoning inside a family van parked in a casino garage. They were not there by accident. They were there because, for their family, there was nowhere else to go.

This tragedy is not an isolated incident. It is the visible, devastating edge of a crisis that operates largely out of sight — in overcrowded apartments, in code-noncompliant rentals, in eviction notices slid under doors, in the chronic stress that accumulates quietly in the bodies of people who do not know where they will sleep next month. Detroit’s affordable housing shortage is not simply an economic or policy failure. It is a public health emergency. And for the Foundation — committed to the dignity and wellbeing of the communities we serve — it demands our attention and our voice.

The Scope of the Problem

Detroit’s housing challenge is structural, layered, and long in the making. Research from the University of Michigan’s Poverty Solutions initiative describes the crisis as shaped by “an inadequate supply of affordable housing; high property tax rates often based on inflated property assessments; aging and deteriorating housing; a lack of home repair resources; and a pattern of bulk ownership that has exacerbated displacement pressures.” The result: safe, stable, affordable housing is functionally out of reach for a significant portion of Detroit residents — 78% of whom are Black.

The numbers underscore the depth of the gap. The Detroit-Warren-Livonia area median income (AMI) for a single low-income occupant stood at $53,700 annually in 2024 — yet half of Detroit’s renter households earn a median household income of approximately $26,704, nearly $13,000 below Michigan’s statewide median. The standard affordability threshold — spending no more than 30% of income on housing — is a threshold that roughly 50% of renter households nationally, and many Detroiters specifically, cannot meet.

Despite a city goal of building 2,000 new multi-family affordable housing units by 2023, only approximately 900 new units were completed between 2018 and 2023 — less than half the target. Detroit continues to fall thousands of units short of what residents actually need. The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, which convened a day-long housing summit with Detroit policymakers and researchers in June 2025, identified high construction costs as one of the primary deterrents to closing that gap.

Meanwhile, the human cost compounds. In January 2024, the Point-in-Time count recorded 455 homeless children in Detroit — up from 312 the year before, a record high. In 2023, more than 20,000 Detroiters had eviction filings brought against them, approaching pre-pandemic levels after a brief reprieve. Research shows that 9 in 10 pandemic-era eviction filings in Detroit involved rental properties not in compliance with local health and safety codes — including regulations governing lead hazards.

Housing Is Health

The connection between housing instability and health outcomes is no longer a matter of theoretical debate. It is one of the most rigorously documented relationships in contemporary public health research.

The Lancet Public Health characterizes housing as “a key social determinant of health,” noting that healthy housing — affordable, secure, properly ventilated, free from mold and toxins — is foundational to physical and mental wellbeing. Conversely, exposure to unhealthy home environments has been directly linked to respiratory and cardiovascular disease, compromised mental health, elevated infectious disease transmission, and increased injury risk.

A 2024 analysis published in PLOS ONE — examining the research portfolios of the NIH, CDC, and HUD — confirms that “exposure to housing affordability stress has been shown to have a negative impact on mental health,” and that the COVID-19 pandemic brought eviction and housing displacement into sharp focus as major social determinants of health, particularly for communities already facing systemic disadvantage.

A 2025 systematic review published in PubMed Central, drawing on 55 peer-reviewed studies across a 34-year period, found that housing insecurity was consistently associated with adverse health 

outcomes across every stage of life — from pregnancy through older age — with each life stage presenting distinct vulnerabilities. The implications are generational: the health consequences of growing up in housing-insecure households do not resolve when childhood ends.

Research cited by the Network for Public Health Law estimates that circumstances like housing quality and

stability may account for as much as 80% of overall health outcomes — dwarfing the contribution of

healthcare access alone.

Families grappling with housing instability are measurably more likely to report poor health, high blood pressure, depression, anxiety, and psychological distress. Children in these households face elevated rates of disease and mortality. Adults who have been evicted report significantly higher levels of stress and deteriorating physical health. University of Michigan School of Public Health researchers Mehdipanah, Dewar, and Eisenberg, writing in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (2021), describe Detroit as “a compelling setting” for examining the combined effects of affordability, housing conditions, and neighborhood characteristics on the health of low-income homeowners — precisely because the city’s history makes those intersections so acute.

The Racial Architecture of the Crisis

Detroit’s housing crisis does not affect all residents equally. It sits at the precise intersection of structural racism, economic marginalization, and residential segregation — a convergence that public health scholars have documented for decades.

The University of Michigan’s 2024 Michigan Statewide Housing Needs Assessment reveals a 34-percentage-point homeownership gap between Black and white households — a gap the authors attribute directly to the lasting impact of discriminatory housing policy in the United States. Neighborhoods in the Detroit metropolitan area with larger Black populations are statistically more likely to have higher rates of disability and mortality. Research consistently finds that low-income Black women are disproportionately subject to eviction — one of the most acutely health-damaging housing events a household can experience.

Williams and Collins, writing in Public Health Reports, characterized racial residential segregation as “a fundamental cause of racial disparities in health” — a framing that has only grown in urgency as Detroit’s renter population has been squeezed between stagnant wages, aging housing stock, and rising rents. As the University of Michigan’s Pursuit journal puts it plainly: “Detroiters who face rising rents, poor living conditions and systemic barriers to affordable and safe housing are at greater risk of poor health.”

What This Means for the Foundation’s Work

The Charlie E. & Minnie P. Hendrix Foundation has always operated from the belief that community wellbeing is indivisible — that you cannot address health without addressing the conditions in which people actually live. The research is unambiguous: housing is health. Affordable housing is preventive medicine. Eviction prevention is chronic disease intervention.

This moment calls us to consider several questions together:

▶ How do we speak about housing in our work? Are we naming it explicitly as a health equity issue — or allowing it to remain siloed as an economic or policy concern? The evidence demands integration.

▶ Whom do we partner with? Organizations like Poverty Solutions at the University of Michigan, Wayne County’s housing assistance programs, and Detroit’s emerging tenant advocacy infrastructure are generating both knowledge and intervention models grounded in community realities.

▶ Where is our voice needed most? Whether in supporting eviction prevention initiatives, advocating for lead-safe housing enforcement, amplifying the data on children experiencing homelessness, or centering the lived experiences of Detroit’s predominantly Black renter population — there are specific, high-leverage entry points.

The two children who died on that February night in 2025 deserved a home. Their story is not an outlier — it is a signal. The Foundation exists precisely to help Detroit answer that signal with more than sorrow.

Selected References

Mehdipanah, R., Dewar, M., & Eisenberg, A. (2021). Threats to and opportunities for low-income homeownership, housing stability, and health: Protocol for the Detroit 2017 Make-It-Home Evaluation Study. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(21), 11230. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph182111230

University of Michigan Poverty Solutions. (n.d.). Building a path to safe and stable housing for all Detroiters. https://poverty.umich.edu

Mehdipanah, R., et al. (2024). Detroit’s legacy of housing inequity has caused long-term health impacts. University of Michigan School of Public Health – Pursuit. https://sph.umich.edu/pursuit/2024posts

Belhaj, M., et al. (2024). 2024 Michigan Statewide Housing Needs Assessment. University of Michigan School of Public Health. https://sph.umich.edu

Wilson, M.E., & Kuk, J. (2025). Detroit’s lack of affordable housing pushes families to the edge. Michigan Advance, April 29, 2025. https://michiganadvance.com

Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. (2025). The challenges and opportunities facing Detroit’s housing market. https://www.chicagofed.org

Bick, A., et al. (2024). The intersection of health and housing: Analysis of the research portfolios of NIH, CDC, and HUD. PLOS ONE. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0296996

The Lancet Public Health. (2025). Housing as a social determinant of health: A contemporary framework. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpub

The Lancet. (2024). Housing: An overlooked social determinant of health. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(24)00914-0

Network for Public Health Law. (2025). The public health implications of housing instability, eviction, and homelessness. https://www.networkforphl.org

PubMed Central / NCBI. (2025). Shelter to survival: Unpacking the health impacts of housing insecurity across the life course. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12840798

Williams, D.R., & Collins, C. (2001). Racial residential segregation: A fundamental cause of racial disparities in health. Public Health Reports, 116(5), 404–416.



City of Detroit. (2024). Chapter 2: Affordable Housing – Roadmap to Recovery. https://playbook.detroitmi.gov

U.S. News / UM School of Public Health. (2024). How to curb the harm caused by Detroit’s legacy of housing inequity. https://www.usnews.com

Prepared for internal discussion and distribution by the Charlie E. & Minnie P. Hendrix Foundation.

All statistics and citations reflect the most current publicly available scholarship and reporting as of mid-2025.