What Solves Homelessness?
Ensuring Access to Quality Healthcare, Treatment, and Services
All over the nation, people struggle to access the quality healthcare that they need to live stable, healthy lives. But when people can’t access or afford the care that they need, their medical and economic vulnerability increases. For people experiencing homelessness who often have high health needs, the situation is even more urgent, and the barriers are even higher. By expanding the available resources and increasing the capacity of the healthcare sector to serve more people in need, we can keep people safer and healthier while they work to reconnect to housing.
Addressing Healthcare Access
Every person has their own unique healthcare and service needs, and those experiencing homelessness are no exception. To reduce the medical vulnerabilities that make homelessness so dangerous, we must ensure that people experiencing homelessness have access to quality, affordable care.
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The mortality rate for homeless individuals compared to people who are housed
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The likelihood that a person experiencing homelessness will lack health insurance compared to a housed person.
1 in every 20 visits to emergency departments involve people who are homeless or face housing insecurity (source)
Closing the Healthcare Gap for Homeless Populations
Serving the healthcare needs of people experiencing homelessness requires broad changes in how healthcare is delivered to low-income households. These improvements are large and systematic, but they would boost the quality of life for entire communities by ensuring that everyone has the medical support to live a healthy, stable, and productive life.
Expanding access is vital, but improving the overall quality of healthcare and other supportive services is also critical for increasing the well-being and stability of people who are experiencing or at risk of homelessness. By ensuring that healthcare policy is rooted in evidence-based and culturally appropriate practice, we improve the standard of care for people experiencing homelessness.
Boosting healthcare access means ensuring that people can receive the care they need at home or within their communities. This can be achieved through policies that broaden the designations of who can provide healthcare services (including peer specialists and community health workers), expanding telehealth resources, and advancing street medicine and mobile health units. Additionally, by making Medicaid and Medicare easier for homeless services organizations to use, increasing capacity of states to implement Medicaid waivers, and increasing funding for a range of services for Substance Use Disorder treatment, we can build communities where access to a broad array of healthcare solutions is more available to people when they want and need them.
The homeless services, healthcare, mental health, and broader human services sectors are all facing a workforce crisis that has limited their ability to serve people with the greatest needs. Correcting this situation demands greater federal resources to support these essential workers and expanded pathways to boost employment in these sectors.
To manage or recover from any health issue, people need stability. Attending follow-up appointments, getting referrals to specialists, taking medicine as prescribed, and participating in preventive care are fundamental to everyone’s health. But without the stability of a safe place to live, any healthcare regimen is in jeopardy. That is why in order to truly address the healthcare needs and vulnerabilities of the homeless population, our focus must be on rehousing them with urgency.
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