Today, the New England Journal of Medicine published an article Housing as Health Care — New York’s Boundary-Crossing Experiment promoting supportive housing as a solution to the 1.5 million homeless people in America who also experience numerous health issues and are among the highest users of high-cost health care. Co-authored by the Commissioner of NYS’s Department of Health, NY’s Deputy Medicaid Director and a doctor at one of NYC’s public hospitals, this article advocates for placing people who are homeless into supportive housing so they can experience improved health, leading to reduced healthcare costs, especially when the supportive housing is targeted to frequent users of health services.
We applaud these leaders for clearly stating, “it’s time to broaden our thinking and spending to reach outside conventional health care silos” and promoting the value of supportive housing to our healthcare system and, most importantly, people in need of safe, affordable and stable housing.
