Housing is health care

At the American Thoracic Society (ATS) Conference in May, the timely keynote lecture explored health care's role in serving unhoused people.

The ATS conference was held in San Francisco, CA, which has some of the highest rates of homelessness in the US. There are several common misconceptions about the factors that drive higher rates of homelessness, with many presuming it is due to warmer climates and high rates of mental health conditions. However, as Margot Kushel, Director of the Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, University of California, San Francisco, explained at ATS, “It is really about the mismatch between housing and incomes…we don't have enough housing and people's income isn't high enough to pay for it.” Although deeply affordable housing is the main systemic factor driving homelessness, mental health and substance use problems do act as precipitants, and once homeless, those problems are exacerbated alongside many other health issues.