New federal plan to reduce homelessness by 25% by 2025 includes health care as part of the solution

The statement “Housing is health care” appears in All In: The Federal Strategic Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness, recently released by the US Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH), which offers a blueprint to reduce the number of people experiencing homelessness in the US by 25% by January 2025.

“I wanted us to reframe homelessness as a public health issue” that should be tackled in the same way as other public health issues, such as COVID-19, smoking, and obesity, USICH Executive Director Jeff Olivet, MA, said in an interview. Currently, many individuals, including elected officials, don’t see homelessness as an “urgent life-and-death situation,” Olivet explained.

All In was created with input from the 19 federal agencies that make up USICH and thousands of people nationwide, including those who work for local, state, and national agencies and organizations, community volunteers and advocates, and more than 500 people who’ve experienced homelessness.