Jennifer Molinsky | Harvard University (original) (raw)

Papers by Jennifer Molinsky

Research paper thumbnail of Breaking with tradition

Harvard Design Magazine: architecture, landscape architecture, urban design and planning, 2015

Research paper thumbnail of Who Has Access to America’s Most Livable Neighborhoods? An Analysis of AARP’s Livability Index

Research paper thumbnail of Bridging the Gap: Service Coordination in Hud Housing During COVID-19

Innovation in Aging

Older HUD residents were vulnerable to COVID-19 due to their age, health, income, race, ethnicity... more Older HUD residents were vulnerable to COVID-19 due to their age, health, income, race, ethnicity, and resources. In combination, these factors increased risk to health and housing stability. While many HUD properties employ a service coordinator, this role is not universally adopted and impacts of these services are not well understood. This research surveyed service coordinators in mid-2020 and late-2021 to characterize older adult experiences living in public housing during the pandemic and ways service coordinators helped manage disruptions. Surveys were disseminated to 3,500 service coordinators. Findings identified needs in transportation, personal care, sociality, mental and physical healthcare, and food. Interventions included resource procurement, benefits management, technology access improvement, and linking residents to services. Tools included information dissemination, needs assessments, and partnership development. This work offers insight into the role of a service c...

Research paper thumbnail of Service Coordination in HUD Housing During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Bridging the Gap

Journal of Gerontological Social Work

Research paper thumbnail of Establishing Academic Homes for Homelessness: A Call to Action

Public Health Reports

Although homelessness ranks as one of society’s most pressing and visible health equity challenge... more Although homelessness ranks as one of society’s most pressing and visible health equity challenges, the academic community has not actively addressed its health impacts, root causes, and potential solutions. Few schools and programs of public health even offer a basic course for students. In the COVID-19 pandemic era, academia must demonstrate urgency to address homelessness and educate learners, motivate fledgling researchers, inform policy makers, offer community-engaged and evidence-based studies, and join in the growing national debate about best approaches. At a minimum, every public health student should understand the interdisciplinary challenges of homelessness, its implications for health equity, and opportunities to address the crisis. We call for academia, particularly schools and programs of public health, to engage more fully in national partnerships to care for members of society who are most marginalized, in terms of health and behavioral health outcomes, quality of l...

Research paper thumbnail of Climate Change, Aging, and Well-being: How Residential Setting Matters

Research paper thumbnail of Household Composition and the Resilience of Older Adults Aging in Community During COVID-19

Innovation in Aging

Household composition impacts older adults’ financial needs, earnings capacity, and benefits elig... more Household composition impacts older adults’ financial needs, earnings capacity, and benefits eligibility. It is also related to formal and informal LTSS access and may be associated with disparities between racial and ethnic groups since Black and Hispanic older adults are more likely than white older adults to live in multigenerational homes. The relationship between household composition and community-based aging is highly salient as multigenerational households and older people living alone are expected to increase in both number and share in coming years. This research framed the pandemic period as a stress-test to detect differences in resilience, defined as financial and LTSS stability and number of hardships, associated with older adults living alone, with partner, or with family or unrelated coresidents. Using the state-identified Health and Retirement Study (HRS), researchers developed a pre-pandemic profile of financial resources and public benefit utilization, informal an...

Research paper thumbnail of Who Has Access to America’s Most Livable Neighborhoods? An Analysis of AARP’s Livability Index

Research paper thumbnail of Identifying Cost-Burdened Older Adults: What Is the Best Measure?

Innovation in Aging, 2020

While affordable housing typically describes housing costs that fall within 30 percent of total i... more While affordable housing typically describes housing costs that fall within 30 percent of total income, older adult spending systematically differs from younger cohorts. For instance, budgets may skew away from mortgages and towards home modifications while medical or personal care expenses can drive monthly costs. This research uses the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) to explore various older adult housing cost burden measures and identify their relative advantages. Measures of cost burden are applied to HRS respondents and different cost burdened groups are defined. The welfare of each group is then assessed using metrics such as unmet need and caregiver stress. Findings suggest that traditional cost burden measures identify many vulnerable older adults. However, other measures of cost burden can highlight older adults who are disproportionately impacted by medical cost. This research should help professionals better align the metric that defines their target population members ...

Research paper thumbnail of Homeownership Built to Last: Balancing Access, Affordability, and Risk after the Housing Crisis

The ups and downs in housing markets over the past two decades are without precedent, and the cos... more The ups and downs in housing markets over the past two decades are without precedent, and the costs - financial, psychological, and social - have been enormous. Yet Americans overwhelmingly still aspire to homeownership, and many still view access to homeownership as an important ingredient for building wealth among historically disadvantaged groups. This timely volume reexamines the goals, risks, and rewards of homeownership in the wake of the housing bubble and subprime lending crisis. Housing, real estate, and finance experts explore the role of government in supporting homeownership, deliberate how homeownership can be made more sustainable, and discuss how best to balance affordability, access, and risk, particularly for minorities and low income families. Contributors: Eric S. Belsky (JCHS); Raphael W. Bostic (University of Southern California, USA); Mark Calabria (Cato Institute, USA); Kaloma Cardwell (University of California, Berkeley, USA); Mark Cole (Hope LoanPort); J. Mi...

Research paper thumbnail of Joint Center for Housing Studies Harvard University What To Do About Slums ?

Slum development models and strategies tend to assume a needs-based outlook, focusing on what spe... more Slum development models and strategies tend to assume a needs-based outlook, focusing on what specific slums lack. In this paper, I argue instead for an asset-based approach to slum development, employing insights from the seminal work of Kretzmann and McNight, which rests on the idea that physical, social, human, and other assets can all be brought to bear to improve slums. I engage at a theoretical level the possible uses of land policy, regulation, transfers, taxation, and other specific strategies to promote an asset-based approach to slum development, and then employ the example of the slum of Nima in Ghana to illustrate how an asset-based approach to slum development might work in practice. I argue that the shift to an asset-based approach can produce positive neighborhood effects, enable slums to overcome negative perceptions, and generate additional support for slum redevelopment efforts while seeking to encourage slum dwellers to take co-responsibility for improving their w...

Research paper thumbnail of Breaking with tradition

Research paper thumbnail of The Association Between High Levels of Mortgage Debt and Financial Well- Being in Old Age: Implications for the Financial Education Field

Research paper thumbnail of Homeownership Built to Last

Research paper thumbnail of Supplemental Material, Appendix_1_Audit_Tools_31_Mar_2019 - Measuring the Built Environment for Aging in Place: A Review of Neighborhood Audit Tools

Supplemental Material, Appendix_1_Audit_Tools_31_Mar_2019 for Measuring the Built Environment for... more Supplemental Material, Appendix_1_Audit_Tools_31_Mar_2019 for Measuring the Built Environment for Aging in Place: A Review of Neighborhood Audit Tools by Har Ye Kan, Ann Forsyth and Jennifer Molinsky in Journal of Planning Literature

Research paper thumbnail of Fostering Inclusion in American Neighborhoods

This framing paper was originally presented at A Shared Future: Fostering Communities of Inclusio... more This framing paper was originally presented at A Shared Future: Fostering Communities of Inclusion in an Era of Inequality, a national symposium hosted by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies in April 2017. The symposium examined how patterns of residential segregation by income and race in the United States are changing and the consequences of residential segregation for individuals and society, and sought to identify the most promising strategies for fostering more inclusive communities in the years to come. Jonathan Spader Senior Research Associate, Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University

Research paper thumbnail of Housing and Planning Supporting Healthy Aging

Healthy Aging, 2019

The homes and communities in which people live are important determinants of health, influencing ... more The homes and communities in which people live are important determinants of health, influencing opportunities for healthy behaviors and social engagement; limiting exposure to physical risks, toxins, and stressors; and determining access to services and healthcare. For older adults, living environments are critical to healthy aging: these are the locations where older people spend the majority of their time, and the characteristics of homes, neighborhoods, and communities can help people manage or avoid functional limitations, disabilities, and chronic disease – or exacerbate them. As the World Health Organization has noted in its report on world aging, “Where the fit between people and their environments is good, [individuals] will enjoy the greatest opportunities to build and maintain both their intrinsic capacity and functional ability.”

Research paper thumbnail of Can the Nation’s Housing Support a Population Seeking to Age in Place?

Innovation in Aging, 2020

While surveys report that most older adults wish to “age in place,” the nation’s current housing ... more While surveys report that most older adults wish to “age in place,” the nation’s current housing and neighborhoods fall short on several dimensions needed to support independence and health in later life. Drawing from national data (including the American Housing Survey, American Community Survey, Health and Retirement Survey, and Survey of Consumer Finances), we describe the current housing and living situations of older adults and key challenges they face in securing affordable, accessible housing while also securing supportive services. We identify three challenges: the unaffordability of housing, which causes budgetary tradeoffs in healthcare spending; a lack of accessibility features in homes and neighborhoods, which can limit independence and safety, and the low-density location of much of the US housing stock (including that inhabited by older adults), where service delivery is difficult and the potential for isolation is high. We conclude with an overview of the policy impli...

Research paper thumbnail of The interests of landowners on the metropolitan fringe

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, Febr... more Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, February 2005.

Research paper thumbnail of The Association Between High Mortgage Debt and Financial Well-Being in Old Age: Implications for the Financial Education Field

Over the last few decades the share of older homeowners (age 62 and older) with mortgage debt has... more Over the last few decades the share of older homeowners (age 62 and older) with mortgage debt has doubled, while the typical amount of outstanding debt relative to home values among this group has tripled. Older homeowners still paying off mortgage debt face high rates of housing cost burdens (paying more than 30 percent of income for housing), leaving less income for other necessities. In addition, homeowners with higher mortgage debt have less housing equity to tap for critical needs and face the ongoing risk of foreclosure. For these reasons, higher levels of mortgage debt may be expected to create lower levels of financial well-being among these individuals. Using both descriptive and multivariate approaches, this paper explores two issues related to these trends. First, it examines the relationship of financial well-being with both the incidence of mortgage debt and housing cost burdens based on the CFPB’s Financial WellBeing Scale as applied to data from the 2016 National Fina...

Research paper thumbnail of Breaking with tradition

Harvard Design Magazine: architecture, landscape architecture, urban design and planning, 2015

Research paper thumbnail of Who Has Access to America’s Most Livable Neighborhoods? An Analysis of AARP’s Livability Index

Research paper thumbnail of Bridging the Gap: Service Coordination in Hud Housing During COVID-19

Innovation in Aging

Older HUD residents were vulnerable to COVID-19 due to their age, health, income, race, ethnicity... more Older HUD residents were vulnerable to COVID-19 due to their age, health, income, race, ethnicity, and resources. In combination, these factors increased risk to health and housing stability. While many HUD properties employ a service coordinator, this role is not universally adopted and impacts of these services are not well understood. This research surveyed service coordinators in mid-2020 and late-2021 to characterize older adult experiences living in public housing during the pandemic and ways service coordinators helped manage disruptions. Surveys were disseminated to 3,500 service coordinators. Findings identified needs in transportation, personal care, sociality, mental and physical healthcare, and food. Interventions included resource procurement, benefits management, technology access improvement, and linking residents to services. Tools included information dissemination, needs assessments, and partnership development. This work offers insight into the role of a service c...

Research paper thumbnail of Service Coordination in HUD Housing During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Bridging the Gap

Journal of Gerontological Social Work

Research paper thumbnail of Establishing Academic Homes for Homelessness: A Call to Action

Public Health Reports

Although homelessness ranks as one of society’s most pressing and visible health equity challenge... more Although homelessness ranks as one of society’s most pressing and visible health equity challenges, the academic community has not actively addressed its health impacts, root causes, and potential solutions. Few schools and programs of public health even offer a basic course for students. In the COVID-19 pandemic era, academia must demonstrate urgency to address homelessness and educate learners, motivate fledgling researchers, inform policy makers, offer community-engaged and evidence-based studies, and join in the growing national debate about best approaches. At a minimum, every public health student should understand the interdisciplinary challenges of homelessness, its implications for health equity, and opportunities to address the crisis. We call for academia, particularly schools and programs of public health, to engage more fully in national partnerships to care for members of society who are most marginalized, in terms of health and behavioral health outcomes, quality of l...

Research paper thumbnail of Climate Change, Aging, and Well-being: How Residential Setting Matters

Research paper thumbnail of Household Composition and the Resilience of Older Adults Aging in Community During COVID-19

Innovation in Aging

Household composition impacts older adults’ financial needs, earnings capacity, and benefits elig... more Household composition impacts older adults’ financial needs, earnings capacity, and benefits eligibility. It is also related to formal and informal LTSS access and may be associated with disparities between racial and ethnic groups since Black and Hispanic older adults are more likely than white older adults to live in multigenerational homes. The relationship between household composition and community-based aging is highly salient as multigenerational households and older people living alone are expected to increase in both number and share in coming years. This research framed the pandemic period as a stress-test to detect differences in resilience, defined as financial and LTSS stability and number of hardships, associated with older adults living alone, with partner, or with family or unrelated coresidents. Using the state-identified Health and Retirement Study (HRS), researchers developed a pre-pandemic profile of financial resources and public benefit utilization, informal an...

Research paper thumbnail of Who Has Access to America’s Most Livable Neighborhoods? An Analysis of AARP’s Livability Index

Research paper thumbnail of Identifying Cost-Burdened Older Adults: What Is the Best Measure?

Innovation in Aging, 2020

While affordable housing typically describes housing costs that fall within 30 percent of total i... more While affordable housing typically describes housing costs that fall within 30 percent of total income, older adult spending systematically differs from younger cohorts. For instance, budgets may skew away from mortgages and towards home modifications while medical or personal care expenses can drive monthly costs. This research uses the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) to explore various older adult housing cost burden measures and identify their relative advantages. Measures of cost burden are applied to HRS respondents and different cost burdened groups are defined. The welfare of each group is then assessed using metrics such as unmet need and caregiver stress. Findings suggest that traditional cost burden measures identify many vulnerable older adults. However, other measures of cost burden can highlight older adults who are disproportionately impacted by medical cost. This research should help professionals better align the metric that defines their target population members ...

Research paper thumbnail of Homeownership Built to Last: Balancing Access, Affordability, and Risk after the Housing Crisis

The ups and downs in housing markets over the past two decades are without precedent, and the cos... more The ups and downs in housing markets over the past two decades are without precedent, and the costs - financial, psychological, and social - have been enormous. Yet Americans overwhelmingly still aspire to homeownership, and many still view access to homeownership as an important ingredient for building wealth among historically disadvantaged groups. This timely volume reexamines the goals, risks, and rewards of homeownership in the wake of the housing bubble and subprime lending crisis. Housing, real estate, and finance experts explore the role of government in supporting homeownership, deliberate how homeownership can be made more sustainable, and discuss how best to balance affordability, access, and risk, particularly for minorities and low income families. Contributors: Eric S. Belsky (JCHS); Raphael W. Bostic (University of Southern California, USA); Mark Calabria (Cato Institute, USA); Kaloma Cardwell (University of California, Berkeley, USA); Mark Cole (Hope LoanPort); J. Mi...

Research paper thumbnail of Joint Center for Housing Studies Harvard University What To Do About Slums ?

Slum development models and strategies tend to assume a needs-based outlook, focusing on what spe... more Slum development models and strategies tend to assume a needs-based outlook, focusing on what specific slums lack. In this paper, I argue instead for an asset-based approach to slum development, employing insights from the seminal work of Kretzmann and McNight, which rests on the idea that physical, social, human, and other assets can all be brought to bear to improve slums. I engage at a theoretical level the possible uses of land policy, regulation, transfers, taxation, and other specific strategies to promote an asset-based approach to slum development, and then employ the example of the slum of Nima in Ghana to illustrate how an asset-based approach to slum development might work in practice. I argue that the shift to an asset-based approach can produce positive neighborhood effects, enable slums to overcome negative perceptions, and generate additional support for slum redevelopment efforts while seeking to encourage slum dwellers to take co-responsibility for improving their w...

Research paper thumbnail of Breaking with tradition

Research paper thumbnail of The Association Between High Levels of Mortgage Debt and Financial Well- Being in Old Age: Implications for the Financial Education Field

Research paper thumbnail of Homeownership Built to Last

Research paper thumbnail of Supplemental Material, Appendix_1_Audit_Tools_31_Mar_2019 - Measuring the Built Environment for Aging in Place: A Review of Neighborhood Audit Tools

Supplemental Material, Appendix_1_Audit_Tools_31_Mar_2019 for Measuring the Built Environment for... more Supplemental Material, Appendix_1_Audit_Tools_31_Mar_2019 for Measuring the Built Environment for Aging in Place: A Review of Neighborhood Audit Tools by Har Ye Kan, Ann Forsyth and Jennifer Molinsky in Journal of Planning Literature

Research paper thumbnail of Fostering Inclusion in American Neighborhoods

This framing paper was originally presented at A Shared Future: Fostering Communities of Inclusio... more This framing paper was originally presented at A Shared Future: Fostering Communities of Inclusion in an Era of Inequality, a national symposium hosted by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies in April 2017. The symposium examined how patterns of residential segregation by income and race in the United States are changing and the consequences of residential segregation for individuals and society, and sought to identify the most promising strategies for fostering more inclusive communities in the years to come. Jonathan Spader Senior Research Associate, Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University

Research paper thumbnail of Housing and Planning Supporting Healthy Aging

Healthy Aging, 2019

The homes and communities in which people live are important determinants of health, influencing ... more The homes and communities in which people live are important determinants of health, influencing opportunities for healthy behaviors and social engagement; limiting exposure to physical risks, toxins, and stressors; and determining access to services and healthcare. For older adults, living environments are critical to healthy aging: these are the locations where older people spend the majority of their time, and the characteristics of homes, neighborhoods, and communities can help people manage or avoid functional limitations, disabilities, and chronic disease – or exacerbate them. As the World Health Organization has noted in its report on world aging, “Where the fit between people and their environments is good, [individuals] will enjoy the greatest opportunities to build and maintain both their intrinsic capacity and functional ability.”

Research paper thumbnail of Can the Nation’s Housing Support a Population Seeking to Age in Place?

Innovation in Aging, 2020

While surveys report that most older adults wish to “age in place,” the nation’s current housing ... more While surveys report that most older adults wish to “age in place,” the nation’s current housing and neighborhoods fall short on several dimensions needed to support independence and health in later life. Drawing from national data (including the American Housing Survey, American Community Survey, Health and Retirement Survey, and Survey of Consumer Finances), we describe the current housing and living situations of older adults and key challenges they face in securing affordable, accessible housing while also securing supportive services. We identify three challenges: the unaffordability of housing, which causes budgetary tradeoffs in healthcare spending; a lack of accessibility features in homes and neighborhoods, which can limit independence and safety, and the low-density location of much of the US housing stock (including that inhabited by older adults), where service delivery is difficult and the potential for isolation is high. We conclude with an overview of the policy impli...

Research paper thumbnail of The interests of landowners on the metropolitan fringe

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, Febr... more Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, February 2005.

Research paper thumbnail of The Association Between High Mortgage Debt and Financial Well-Being in Old Age: Implications for the Financial Education Field

Over the last few decades the share of older homeowners (age 62 and older) with mortgage debt has... more Over the last few decades the share of older homeowners (age 62 and older) with mortgage debt has doubled, while the typical amount of outstanding debt relative to home values among this group has tripled. Older homeowners still paying off mortgage debt face high rates of housing cost burdens (paying more than 30 percent of income for housing), leaving less income for other necessities. In addition, homeowners with higher mortgage debt have less housing equity to tap for critical needs and face the ongoing risk of foreclosure. For these reasons, higher levels of mortgage debt may be expected to create lower levels of financial well-being among these individuals. Using both descriptive and multivariate approaches, this paper explores two issues related to these trends. First, it examines the relationship of financial well-being with both the incidence of mortgage debt and housing cost burdens based on the CFPB’s Financial WellBeing Scale as applied to data from the 2016 National Fina...