How can data from hazard investigations put muscle into organizing and advocacy campaigns? As discussed in “Power of data”, data about environmental health hazards in a community and in specific properties can provoke a beneficial shift in attitudes, perceived responsibilities and/or actual legal duties on the part of policy makers, government officials and landlords. It also can shift the terms of debate toward prevention by focusing on the vectors of disease (dilapidated housing) in addition to sick children.

Beyond the impact of the data, the process of hazard investigation itself can build the power of advocacy groups to win solutions. The home hazard investigation process – community organization members visiting families in high-risk homes, assessing their homes, educating residents about hazards, and reporting results – is an opportunity to educate a base of people who are directly affected by the problem and recruit them as participants in advocacy campaigns. Once informed about the existence of hazards in their homes and the implications of these hazards, community members will likely be more motivated to join in organized efforts to hold landlords and officials accountable for addressing these hazards community-wide in a meaningful way.

Also, providing community members with the ability to investigate homes for health hazards builds power within communities. Increasing the skills, knowledge, status and experience of community members builds human capital and helps organizations develop leadership. Having greater control over these tools also builds the power and reputation of the organization. Groups are able to inform families about hidden health dangers related to substandard conditions and provide information to help families protect their children. With these tools in their hands, community-based organizations have the power to decide which homes to investigate, how to aggregate and present the results and what policy solutions to pursue. Thus groups actually acquire a new power to redefine the problem of substandard housing for officials and policy makers and influence the policy agenda.

Finally, there’s something novel and newsworthy about communities using science to obtain vital information about serious hazards that have thus far been overlooked. The fact that community groups actually have ownership of this data and the means to obtain it helps advocates generate press coverage, raise public visibility of the problem of hazardous housing, and amplify demands for specific solutions. Better press coverage can further enhance the reputation of an organization and amplify its voice as it characterizes the problems and frames possible solutions.

Finally, these tools are versatile enough to use in organizing and advocacy for a wide range of policy goals and other solutions. For example, advocates can use sampling results to advocate for better enforcement of existing laws, such as housing or building codes. Hazard data can be used to win new funding appropriations or grants to address hazards in housing, or improve the targeting of existing funds. Address-specific lead hazard data can be the missing ingredient to leverage the federal lead disclosure rule. A discussion paper called Holding Property Owners and Government Agencies Accountable explores these goals and strategies in more depth.

The tools are also versatile with regard to the wide range of types of organizations that can successfully use them – affordable housing and tenant groups, environmental health or environmental justice groups, health and child welfare advocacy organizations, public interest legal groups, faith-based organizations and multi-issue community organizations to name a few.