Mechanisms to Improve Health Through Community Land Trusts.

Community land trusts (CLTs) provide long-term affordable housing and offer a range of mechanisms that may improve the health and well-being of low-income households. We sought to elucidate these mechanisms through thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with a diverse sample of CLT staff and residents across the USA. Stakeholders most frequently identified improvements in mental health that come through increased housing stability and affordability. Other factors-including the ways that CLTs promote wealth generation, improvements in housing quality and neighborhood amenities, services and partnerships with healthcare organizations, and democratic governance-were raised by respondents though less frequently tied to health benefits. CLTs represent a promising area for future research on housing's impact on health.

Poverty blindness: exploring the diagnosis and treatment of an epidemic condition.

Despite the historical and social significance of poverty, scholars from varied ideological and philosophical disciplines have often observed that its most notable feature is its invisibility. We suggest that poverty is not excluded from view, but rather from consciousness. This lack of consciousness is due to a subjective "poverty blindness" on the part of those who fail to take the poor into account. In this article we explore this new concept of "Poverty Blindness" (PB) using a clinical approach. We review the clinical manifestations of PB and the associated condition of Poverty Acuity Disorder (PAD). We conclude by suggesting that the ability to see these circumstances and consequences of poverty is not some ambiguous externalized concept, but lies within our own consciousnesses and consciences. Only through recognizing this are we able to assess honestly the realities of poverty or debate how to go about its alleviation.