CSH Publication

Taking Health Care Home: Baseline Report on PSH Tenants, Programs, Policies, and Funding

Author:  Martha R. Burt
July 2005; 49 pages

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In 2003 the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation awarded CSH $6 million over two years for a Taking Health Care Home Initiative (THCH).  CSH is working with states and localities through THCH to demonstrate how they can create supportive housing that ends homelessness for people with chronic health conditions including mental illness, alcohol and chemical dependency, and HIV/AIDS, and how that experience can be replicated on a national scale.  This report analyzes survey data from 63 agencies and 149 projects involved in developing and operating permanent supportive housing (PSH) in each of the THCH sites.

The survey collected information on the number of PSH units in each site, tenant characteristics, financing strategies, and program policies. The projects reported a total of over 12,000 PSH units in the THCH sites combined - from less than 200 in Spokane to over 4000 in Los Angeles. Close to 90 percent of the units are occupied by tenants who are formerly homeless, and around one-third of the units are occupied by those who have experienced chronic homelessness. The THCH sites use a wide variety of funding sources to develop and operate PSH, and the estimated per-unit revenues are $92,200 for capital, $7,700 for operating expenses, and $6,000 for services. These findings provide a foundation by which to estimate the impact of the THCH initiative on increasing the number of PSH units in operation, the number of people who are chronically homeless being served through PSH, and the funding being used to support these efforts.