The Kresge Foundation and the California Endowment released a final report on Innovate Models In Health and Housing last week. CSH staff contributed greatly to this report.
This report aims to bridge a knowledge gap between the affordable housing and healthcare fields that limits their ability to implement health and housing projects and partnerships. These two sectors have begun to realize how much they overlap, but while great work has been done to expose practitioners in both fields to information about their shared interests and common goals, the results to date have been relatively modest.
Many healthcare organizations see affordable housing as critical to the health needs of their patients and plan members, but don’t know how to support the creation of housing and help them secure it. Many housing developers see that providing safe, affordable, and high quality housing to high-need individuals could deliver significant value to health partners, but aren’t sure how to structure a partnership with the relevant health agencies.
This new document provides examples of how various healthcare and housing stakeholders have worked together to take advantage of the strengths of each sector to overcome the constraints that limit successful collaboration.