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Key Implications of Models of Housing Quality • !e Consumerism model justi#es low-quality housing and makes differences in housing quality seem natural. #e model comprises deep assumptions about the free market economy that make it hard for people to understand what can be done to address disparities in housing quality and, as importantly, why something should be done. To overcome the challenges posed by this model, communicators will need strategies to help explain why there are disparities in housing quality, to explain how disparities can be addressed, and to convince people that they should be addressed. Overcoming Consumerist thinking is one of the biggest challenges that housing communicators face in reframing their issues. • !e Where You Live Affects You model can be leveraged to bring environments into view. While speci"c links between environments and health and well-being are not always clear to the public, this model, when it is active in people's thinking, makes people more receptive to seeing the links between environments and health and well-being. By cuing this model and "lling in the blanks in people's understanding, communicators can help people see why programs and policies that address issues at the contextual and community level are necessary to improve the quality of people's housing and health. • !e Evil Slumlord model places systems and contexts out of view. By associating the causes of housing problems with individual character $aws and, in turn, associating solutions with changes in character, the model makes it hard for people to see a role for policy-level solutions. #is model individualizes responsibility for causing and solving housing problems by focusing on the actions of the landlord in isolation, without attention to the broader systems and contexts within which landlords operate. To avoid activating these problematic features of the model, communicators must place the actions of landlords in context, explaining how problematic landlord behaviors are enabled and incentivized by broader systems. • !e Good Old Days model reinforces fatalism about housing affordability. While this way of thinking provides a basis for criticizing lack of affordability and leads people to be critical of consumerist attitudes, the model leads people to see these problems as inevitable features of modern society that are not amenable to change or intervention. To avoid nostalgically reinforcing people's fatalism about housing issues, communicators should refrain from evoking the sense of a better past as a way to criticize the present. How Does Housing Affect Health? Public participants almost never brought up health in conversations about housing or housing quality. However, when the connection between housing and health was introduced, participants drew on a set of cultural models to explain the connections between housing and health. #ese cultural models focus attention on visible aspects of the environment, such as disorder or uncleanliness. #is in turn diverts "A House, a Tent, a Box": Mapping the Gaps Between Expert and Public Understanding of Healthy Housing 22

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