Healthy Housing Initiative

The Integration of Housing and Healthcare Services

The CCUSA Healthy Housing Initiative combines health and housing services to help homeless people remain off the streets. The Catholic Charities ministry – which has 167 agencies nationwide – is a unique space where both comprehensive care for the whole person and safe shelter can be provided at single locations to address the problem of homelessness in communities.
The initiative sets three main goals to achieve by 2025

Reduce chronic homelessness by 20 percent.

Decrease hospital readmission rates for homeless persons by at least 25 percent.

Connect 35 percent of newly housed persons to primary care and behavioral health services.

These goals will be implemented in each of the five agencies that comprise the pilot group: Catholic Charities of Southeast Michigan (CCSEM); Catholic Charities of St. Louis (CCSTL); Catholic Charities of Southern Nevada; Catholic Charities of Portland; Catholic Charities Eastern Washington. The initiative assumes the collaboration of local arch/dioceses, Catholic health systems and other partners such as financial institutions and governmental agencies.

FIVE PILOT AGENCIES

Catholic Charities of Southeast Michigan (CCSEM)

CCSEM is a proud member of the CCUSA Healthy Housing Initiative pilot group. We will work to reduce chronic homelessness by 20 percent in our city through permanent supportive housing that includes wrap around case management and health services for these persons.

Catholic Charities of St. Louis (CCSTL)

CCSTL and St. Patrick Center will also partner with local and national affordable housing and health care organizations to improve identification and support for our most vulnerable citizens, especially those who are chronically homeless.

Catholic Charities of Southern Nevada

Catholic Charities of Southern Nevada is proud to be at the forefront of making a meaningful change in reducing the chronically homeless population in our community. Together with the Diocese of Las Vegas, Catholic Charities of Southern Nevada and Catholic Health Systems will develop an initial project offering 50-75 housing units that will provide wraparound services onsite.

Catholic Charities of Portland

Catholic Charities of Portland looks forward to reducing chronic homelessness in Multnomah County and the Portland metropolitan area through permanent supportive housing that includes wraparound case management and health services for these vulnerable households. At the same time, we remain committed to serving a broad continuum of housing needs, with over 800 existing affordable housing units in the Portland area and across Western Oregon.

Catholic Charities Eastern Washington

In Spokane we have come to the realization that the future of our work to serve the poorest of the poor is profoundly connected to our ability to engage and integrate our services with health care systems. We continue to make intentional connections to show hospitals, health insurance companies and others in the world of medicine the many ways that Catholic Charities programs that stabilize fragile people can also help their bottom lines with utilization aversion. Above all else, we help the most important bottom line for them and for us – the dignity of every human person.

The key to success, according to Johnson, is the collaboration of all community partners:
“No one group – whether it’s the feds, the states or locals – can do it alone.”

Curtis Johnson, Vice President for Housing Strategy, CCUSA

You can be part of the solution


Volunteer at your local Catholic Charities agency to help the chronically homeless

FIND AN AGENCY

Pray for our brothers and sisters who have no shelter

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