The interviews reinforced the prevalence of these patterns of engagement and participation. More than half of the respondents said they are more involved in their neighborhood and with their neighbors than they were as renters. Successful housing interventions create impacts broader than improved shelter. Policy makers and practitioners in community development need to pay attention to the potential that housing interventions have in increasing the level of participation in local communities. NHS of Santa Fe encouraged people participating in home-buyer education to play an active role in their communities once they bought homes.
Home ownership brings new people and new energies into communities.
By doing this, housing intervention becomes a means rather than an end in creating a healthy community. Recently the concept of social capital has emerged as an important factor in sustaining economic activity. But from the experience in Santa Fe, we can learn that when families connected to a comprehensive housing strategy, they connected to a set of relationships that changed their lives. In other words, access to housing also provided access to a new set of understandings and relationships, and this connection helped people expand their sense of what was possible in their lives. Nowhere was this process more apparent than in the home-buyer education carried out by Affordable Housing Roundtable partners.