Tag Archives: Poverty

by | January 16, 2013 · 12:37 pm

Homelessness Jeopardizes Health! Who Knew?

In 2008, the AIDS Foundation of Chicago led a coalition of hospitals and housing groups in conducting a study that investigated the impact of housing on health. The study was called the Chicago Housing for Health Partnership, or CHHP.

The study surveyed a group of 407 homeless folks that were battling with chronic illnesses. Half of the participants were placed in permanent housing with intensive follow-up by a social worker. The other half received ‘usual care,’ which included access to emergency shelters as well as recovery programs. Over the course of four years, doctors measured the health implications of permanent versus non-permanent housing.

The findings were stark.

The participants living in permanent housing utilized “one-third fewer inpatient hospital days and one-quarter fewer emergency room visits” than folks receiving ‘usual care.’ Additionally, there were 583 hospitalizations in the permanent housing group, while there were 743 in the ‘usual care’ group. Such results prove that permanent housing improves health dramatically.

Specifically, participants battling with HIV saw their health significantly enhanced. The study found the following:

  • After one year, 55 percent of HIV-positive participants in the intervention arm had a relatively healthy immune system, compared to 34 percent in the usual group.
  • 40 percent of HIV-positive participants in the intervention group had undetectable levels of HIV in their blood, indicating that treatment was highly successful, compared to 21 percent of usual care participants.
  • The median HIV viral load was 87 percent lower in the intervention group. A low viral load is evidence that treatment is working and reducing levels of HIV in the bloodstream.

Permanent housing accompanied by case management not only improved participant’s health, but it also saved the city a significant amount of money. The experiment proved that of “every 100 chronically homeless individuals housed [the government] will save nearly $1M in public funds per year.” According to The Wall Street Journal, the study elucidated that 201 participants living in permanent housing spent 5,500 days in nursing homes, while 206 ‘usual care’ participants spent 10,023 days in nursing homes. The difference in services amounted to approximately $500,000. While some perceive permanent housing as an unreasonably high expenditure, continuing to pursue the status quo is perpetuating our current deficit.

The CHHP study illustrates that permanent housing breaks the cycle of poverty. As affordable housing becomes scarcer and government continues to cut social services, we worry that folks with low or no income will have less access to permanent housing.  To adequately lessen the pervasiveness of homelessness and curtail chronic illness, providing stable and sustainable alleviation measures is necessary.

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by | March 30, 2012 · 3:55 pm

“How to End the Cycle of Homelessness”…A Work in Progress

The NY Daily News published an opinion article today about the Institute for Children, Poverty, and Homelessness‘ newly released report titled “A New Path: An Immediate Plan to Reduce Family Homelessness.”  This report establishes a framework to confront homelessness in New York City, advocating for a multiplicity of paths to obtain permanent, stable housing.  The report lays out three tiers, or tracks, that families would be placed in based on need.  The first tier would be to place families straight into affordable housing, presumably helping them locate the housing and assisting with rent.  The second tier would be to locate housing, but also help with employment opportunities and other basic social services.  The third tier would be most similar to a shelter, only renamed “Community Residential Resource Centers” in which families live in the center and receive intensive job training, education, counseling, and assistance with child reunification.  Ideally, according to the report, these centers would also function as resources for the neighborhood at large.

While we at UHAB don’t deal directly with issues of homelessness, the majority of buildings we work in have at some point provided housing for New Yorkers in the Work Advantage program.  Sadly, we have witnessed heartbreaking stories from tenants who were in the program but whose benefits have been cut, leaving them with no options but to wait for the marshal to evict them.  The termination of Work Advantage for thousands of New Yorkers has not only effected individual families, but entire buildings.  Once the city stops paying a tenant’s rent, a landlord has less income to make repairs or continue paying a mortgage.  Buildings, as a result, more easily fall into states of disrepair, impacting the lives of all tenants and the larger community as well.

Predatory Equity destroys opportunities for families in New York to live in well-kept, safe, affordable housing.  This reality makes us skeptical of new programs which address homelessness, but don’t provide preservation plans or proposals for creation of new affordable housing.  One cannot go without the other.  Our question is in what buildings and neighborhoods will families be placed?  What ensures this program to be more sustainable than the Work Advantage program? Until the threat of continuous loss of affordable housing is quelled, we feel this plan will not be successful.

Maybe it’s time to ask homeless people themselves what services they want…Picture the Homeless,  a grassroots organizing group of homeless folks demanding respect and human rights, have a lot to say on the matter.

 

To read more about the Institute for Children, Poverty, and Homelessness report, click here.

To read more about Picture the Homeless’ recent action in response to a recent NY Post article, click here.

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