Health and Housing Equity Connection
Gilvar Consulting Services Newsletter
February 2020
This month’s topic:
The Public Health Lens on Homelessness Necessary to Evaluate Proposed New Policy Approaches
Despite the American Public Health Association’s many calls since the 1980s for homelessness to be understood as a Public Health crisis, policy makers have largely failed to attack the issue from this direction. Like the correlations between race and homelessness and between race and poor health outcomes, the correlation between poor health and homelessness has, despite abundant empirical evidence, not yet inspired significant shifts in policy. In fact, during my 20 years of developing clinical partnerships and managing Public Health interventions specifically tailored to assist people living homeless, I only saw a widespread increase in understanding of the APHA’s basic message after the massive 2017 San Diego Hepatitis A outbreak that began among people living unsheltered, eventually hospitalizing over 400 people and killing 20.
This month’s GCS newsletter provides resources for applying a Public Health lens to exploring blind spots in common analyses of homelessness, including the analyses that inform the Trump administration’s new proposed approach. I’ve included my recent blogpost (https://gilvarconsulting.com/a-public-health-lens-on-homelessness-exposes-problems-with-the-trump-administrations-proposed-approach/) on this issue, which relies heavily on my experience addressing homelessness within Public Health – Seattle King County from 2008 to 2019, a period in which the number of people living unsheltered in the region skyrocketed, as did the total homeless population.
I’ve also included several articles that graphically illustrate how serious health issues often precipitate homelessness and undermine efforts to help people become and stay stably housed. I’ve also included a link to the APHA’s many policy statements on homelessness.
I hope these resources prove helpful to those advocating on behalf of policies that support innovation around meeting the complex and intertwined housing and health needs of our most vulnerable community members.
A Public Health Lens on Homelessness Exposes Problems with the Trump Administration’s Proposed Approach (https://gilvarconsulting.com/a-public-health-lens-on-homelessness-exposes-problems-with-the-trump-administrations-proposed-approach/), Gilvar Consulting Services Blog, February 2020
The Impossibility of Managing a Chronic Disease While Homeless, by Dr. Maralyssa Bann
‘Heartbreaking’: Seattle’s Homeless Are Getting Sicker and Shelters are Struggling to Keep Up, by David Kroman
Medical Examiner Report: Homeless Community Deaths Up Nearly 15 Percent, by Ashley Archibald
Health and Housing Partnerships for Older Adults: Aging in Place in Supportive Housing, Corporation for Supportive Housing
Housing and Homelessness as a Public Health Issue, American Public Health Association