Kaiser Permanente has entered into a partnership with Community Solutions to accelerate efforts to end chronic homelessness in 15 communities within the healthcare system’s national footprint.
Over the next three years, Kaiser Permanente will provide $3 million to Community Solutions’ Built for Zero initiative, which since 2015 has used real-time data and existing resources to help 10 communities house more than 65,227 veterans and another 38,583 chronically homeless Americans. The organization estimates that, on any given night, as many as 125,000 people are chronically homeless in America today.
A spokesperson for Community Solutions, Jake McGuire, tells BD+C that his organization’s purpose is to assist communities in pulling together homeless information into one database that would be updated monthly, as the first step toward devising testable strategies to address homelessness.
Those solutions will vary by community. But the goal is to place homeless individuals and families into permanent housing with appropriate support services and case management. McGuire says that it’s less about building new apartments than about unifying a community’s disparate efforts to reduce chronic homelessness.
Kaiser Permanente is one of several partners working with Community Solutions. Others include The Home Depot Foundation, JPMorgan Chase & Co., The Ballmer Group, and Tableau Foundation, which provides data analytics software.
Six of the 15 Kaiser Permanent communities participating in Built for Zero are in California: Sacramento and Sacramento County, Marin County, Richmond and Contra Costa County, Fresno and Madera County, Santa Cruz, Watsonville, and Santa Cruz County; Bakersfield and Kern County, and Riverside County. The other participating markets are Washington D.C., Baltimore, Montgomery County, Md., Arlington County, Va., Fairfax, Va., Denver, Atlanta, and Honolulu.
Rosanne Haggerty (center), president of Community Solutions, speaking at Austin's South by Southwest Conference, where she announced a partnership with Kaiser Permanente, whose Chief Community Health Officer Bechara Choucair is sitting to her right. Bobby Watts, CEO, National Health Care for the Homeless Council, is to Haggerty's left. Image: Community Solutions.
The news of the alliance between Kaiser and Community Solutions was made public today during a panel discussion at the South by Southwest Conference in Austin, Texas. The panelists were Bechara Choucair, M.D., Chief Community Health Officer for Kaiser Permanente; Bobby Watts, CEO of the National Health Care for the Homeless Council; Laurel Blatchford, president of Enterprise Community Partners; and Rosanne Haggerty, president of Community Solutions.
In January, Kaiser Permanente announced separately its commitment to house 500 chronically homeless people over the age of 50 in Oakland, Calif. Last year, Kaiser created its Thriving Communities Fund, a $200 million investment fund focused on addressing affordable housing and other factors that contribute to homelessness.
There are just under 553,000 people who, on a given night, are homeless in the U.S. Approximately 35% are them are unsheltered, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. About 36,000 of these homeless are unaccompanied youths under 25 years old. Half of all homeless people are located in five states: California, New York, Florida, Texas, and Washington
HUD estimates that while chronic homelessness—i.e., someone with a disability who has been homeless for at least a year—is considerably below what it was a decade ago, it has been inching up over the past two years. HUD estimates that nearly one quarter (24%) of all homeless people experience chronic patterns of homelessness, and nearly two-third of these chronically homeless are unsheltered.
The persistent shortage of affordable housing in the U.S. hasn’t helped matters. While the connection between affordability and homelessness may not be as palpable as it was during the last recession—when nearly four million homes were foreclosed each year—many people nevertheless are worried that affordable shelter, either owned or rented, seems out of reach for so many.
Nearly three out of four American households believe the nation is suffering from a housing affordability crisis, according to a representative survey of 2,203 adults that the National Association of Home Builders conducted last November. Seventy-three percent of those polled said that a lack of affordable housing was a problem in the U.S., 68% said this was an issue in their state, and 54% saw it as an issue in the neighborhood.
Related Stories
| Aug 11, 2010
Historic building to be restored in Kansas City
Construction has begun on the conversion of the historic 17-story Home Savings Association building in Kansas City, Mo. The transformed structure, to be known as Grand Boulevard Lofts, will house 134 apartment units. The $18-million project, designed by architect Rosemann & Associates, follows a revitalization of downtown Kansas City, where there is high demand for affordable housing to ser...
| Aug 11, 2010
Old factory converted from hearth to home
A former briquette factory in Cologne-Frechen, Germany, was converted into a mixed-use building by Astoc Architects & Planners, Cologne, in association with Rheinischen Amt für Denkmalpflege—the Rhenish agency for historic preservation. The roughly 172,200-sf building includes a mix of residential condominiums, lofts, and leased commercial space.
| Aug 11, 2010
And the world's tallest building is…
At more than 2,600 feet high, the Burj Dubai (right) can still lay claim to the title of world's tallest building—although like all other super-tall buildings, its exact height will have to be recalculated now that the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) announced a change to its height criteria.
| Aug 11, 2010
Luxury high-rise meets major milestone
A topping off ceremony was held in late October for 400 Fifth Avenue, a 57,000-sf high-rise that includes a 214-room luxury hotel and 190 high-end residential condominiums. Developed by Bizzi & Partners Development and designed by Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects, the 60-story tower in midtown Manhattan sits atop a smaller-scale 10-story base, which creates a street façade t...
| Aug 11, 2010
Mixed-use Seattle high-rise earns LEED Gold
Seattle’s 2201 Westlake development became the city’s first mixed-use and high-rise residential project to earn LEED Gold. Located in Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood, the newly completed 450,000-sf complex includes 300,000 sf of Class A office space, 135 luxury condominiums (known as Enso), and 25,000 sf of retail space.
| Aug 11, 2010
Triangular tower targets travelers
Chicago-based Goettsch Partners is designing a new mixed-use high-rise for the Chinese city of Dalian, located on the Yellow Sea coast. Developed by Hong Kong-based China Resources Land Limited, the tower will have almost 1.1 million sf, which includes a 377-room Grand Hyatt hotel, 84 apartments, three restaurants, banquet space, and a spa and fitness center.
| Aug 11, 2010
Brooklyn's tallest building reaches 514 feet
With the Brooklyner now topped off, the 514-foot-high apartment tower is Brooklyn's tallest building. Designed by New York-based Gerner Kronick + Valcarcel Architects and developed by The Clarett Group, the soaring 51-story tower is constructed of cast-in-place concrete and clad with window walls and decorative metal panels.
| Aug 11, 2010
RMJM unveils design details for $1B green development in Turkey
RMJM has unveiled the design for the $1 billion Varyap Meridian development it is master planning in Istanbul, Turkey's Atasehir district, a new residential and business district. Set on a highly visible site that features panoramic views stretching from the Bosporus Strait in the west to the Sea of Marmara to the south, the 372,000-square-meter development includes a 60-story tower, 1,500 resi...
| Aug 11, 2010
'Feebate' program to reward green buildings in Portland, Ore.
Officials in Portland, Ore., have proposed a green building incentive program that would be the first of its kind in the U.S. Under the program, new commercial buildings, 20,000 sf or larger, that meet Oregon's state building code would be assessed a fee by the city of up to $3.46/sf. The fee would be waived for buildings that achieve LEED Silver certification from the U.
| Aug 11, 2010
Colonnade fixes setback problem in Brooklyn condo project
The New York firm Scarano Architects was brought in by the developers of Olive Park condominiums in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn to bring the facility up to code after frame out was completed. The architects designed colonnades along the building's perimeter to create the 15-foot setback required by the New York City Planning Commission.