Impact Story

Accelerating investments to advance health equity in Grand Rapids, MI

Jul. 15, 2021|City Health Dashboard
GRAND RAPIDS, MI

Challenge

Grand Rapids, MI is working with Invest Health, a national cross-sectoral initiative whose goal is to improve health outcomes through targeted public and private investments aimed at the social determinants of health in neighborhoods that need support the most. The Grand Rapids project team, comprised of representatives from government, health care, and nonprofit sectors, makes investments in historically low-income areas where they will have the largest impact on resident health and well-being. The team needed data at the neighborhood level to understand and help communicate specific needs in the community.

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Impact

The Dashboard provided the level of granularity and visualization necessary for the team working on this initiative to identify patterns, make connections between different issues, and establish a shared language with diverse actors about the importance of social and economic factors that influence health. Using the income inequality, unemployment, and life expectancy measures as a starting point, the Grand Rapids team was able to identify 17 census tracts across the city, locally known as Neighborhoods of Focus, which were struggling socioeconomically and experiencing health disparities.  Investments are directed at these areas with the highest need. Since beginning this project, the Grand Rapids Invest Health team has made exciting strides towards improving health and equity in these communities that include:

  • Increase in low-income housing tax credits in 2018, resulting in more than $50 million worth of credits – about 30% of the state’s available credits – to projects located in Neighborhoods of Focus. LINC was able to secure funding for 1 low-income housing tax credit (LIHTC) project. This will preserve 10 units of affordable housing in the community and add an additional 10 units. This allocation was secured in July of 2021, creating an allocation of $346,000 in LIHTC. This also led to a second project which included 51 units of affordable housing, which, if funded, represents an additional $1,337,327 in LIHTC, or a total of over $15 million in investment.

  • Affordable housing partner, LINC Up, received a $500,000 grant from NeighborWorks’ Project Reinvest initiative to support affordable housing projects and efforts to connect residents in the Neighborhoods of Focus with construction opportunities.

  • A $2M investment from Spectrum Health into Invest Health-related projects for the past three years. The investment focus is to support their team members in projects that sought to increase equitable health outcomes in the aforementioned targeted census tracts by advancing policies and practices that align community investment systems and increase capital flows to their equity promoting built environment investments.

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