Area of Expertise: Health and Housing Connections

Supportive housing is a proven approach to breaking the cycle of homelessness for people with serious mental illness and other disabilities. Supportive housing is a cost-effective approach that combines affordable housing with voluntary support services, enabling people to live with stability, autonomy, and dignity. While supportive housing is an effective approach for addressing homelessness, residents also need social support to live healthy lives and address loneliness, isolation, and barriers to maintaining their mental health.

Fountain House and CSH are exploring Community-Centered Housing (CCH), an innovative approach that integrates the clubhouse model’s social practice into supportive housing. Pioneered by Fountain House, social practice uses community engagement and social connection to help people recover from mental illness.

This policy brief illuminates early research findings from pilot programs, showing that Community-Centered Housing strengthens social connections, reduces loneliness, and enhances residents’ sense of purpose and wellbeing. To forge a path forward for expanding CCH, the brief recommends bringing the model to additional pilot sites, conducting rigorous evaluation, expanding workforce training, and educating the field about social practice and supportive housing integration.

This approach offers a chance to reimagine what housing can achieve. By embracing this model, we can drive meaningful transformation in the housing sector and create environments that support people living with serious mental illness and promote lasting recovery and stability.

Twenty years ago, CSH developed the FUSE (Frequently Used Systems Engagement) model to deliver a transformative solution that aligns housing, health, and justice systems to provide supportive housing and coordinated care. With a proven track record of success, FUSE has become a national model for cross-sector collaboration and data-driven intervention.

For 20 years, CSH has partnered with communities across the country to identify people with complex needs who frequently cycle through emergency systems—such as shelters, hospitals, and jails—and connect them to the housing and services they need to break the cycle, achieve stability, and thrive.

This brief highlights 4 communities that have successfully implemented FUSE. Partners share their lessons learned and the lasting impact that FUSE has had on systems, residents, and communities.

A number of states are looking to both increase supportive housing capacity and quality. One component of improving quality could be developing more intensive supportive services. Many barriers exist to increasing supportive housing capacity for most communities, including a lack of a Medicaid Authority. Nearly 30 states already have in place some supportive housing services benefit, and CSH’s map can help you find where your state is in the process. This brief provides a detailed summary of state actions and lessons that could be replicated in your state.

Updated November 2025

This guide enhances understanding of the health conditions experienced by individuals navigating housing instability. Utilizing existing data elements monitored at the intersection of health and housing allows professionals to reduce the administrative burden associated with new data tracking mechanisms while streamlining operations to improve health outcomes.

This resource is intended to support health centers in identifying some important components to effective programming for HIV+ individuals leaving carceral settings to ensure smooth linkage to care and housing following discharge.

An increasing number of states are including coverage of Housing Related Services (HRS) in their Medicaid programs. These new services aim to provide more units of supportive housing and higher quality services. CSH has found that states who include these six strategies in their efforts are more likely to be successful. Learn more about these efforts, examples and concrete next steps your state can take to ensure these programs lead to greater supportive housing capacity and higher quality supportive housing statewide.