Housing and healthcare go hand in hand, say CityLab's Kriston Capps and Benjamin Schneider, and fighting homelessness can combat many of the negative health outcomes associated with living outside shelter.
Now, healthcare giant Kaiser Permanente, has pledged to invest $200 million in affordable housing and homelessness over the next two to three years.
Kaiser will spend the $200 million in the eight states (plus the District of Columbia) where it operates. The funds will be part of Kaiser’s impact investment fund, meaning they will be expected to generate a return so that the fund can continue to make new investments in the future. This could be accomplished through residential developments that mix homeless services and market-rate housing. Kaiser’s entry into the national housing issue makes sense: Its coverage area is a who’s-who of America’s most expensive regions, including California, Oregon, and Washington State, and the Washington, D.C., area. These are areas where housing affordability has begun to make an impact on healthcare outcomes.
The benefits of combining housing and healthcare to treat chronic homelessness are abundant. Philadelphia offers an example. The consolidated city–county established a single-payer system for public behavioral healthcare. The city’s Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual Disability Services receives some $800 million in funds through Medicaid. The agency administers the city’s permanent supportive housing initiative, and because most of the people who come through Philadelphia’s housing-first program are eligible for Medicaid coverage, Medicaid pays for the healthcare and recovery sources they receive.
According to the Kaiser Foundation, of the roughly 1,200 chronically homeless people who entered into Philadelphia’s permanent supportive housing between 2009 and 2017, 89 percent of them remain in stable housing. That reduces both the cost and strain on other resources, including emergency rooms and jails.
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