NPR Talk of the Nation: "Housing First" as a Solution for Homelessness

You can read a short article and listen to the 30 minute segment from Talk of the Nation with Neil Conan on Monday, August 3rd here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=111504713

August 3, 2009
Dr. Jessie Gaeta co-founded the Home & Healthy for Good project. The program gets the chronically homeless in Massachusetts into permanent housing first, then focuses on medical treatment.

David, a former Marine who was homeless for decades and is now a Home & Healthy for Good tenant housed through MHSA and MHSA Member Agency Pine Street Inn, sits in his bedroom. Tara Morris

Home & Healthy for Good is part of the Massachusetts Housing and Shelter Alliance. The program has provided homes to nearly 400 chronically homeless individuals. In addition to lowering homeless rates, the program has saved the state Office of Medicaid thousands of dollars per person.

As Dr. Gaeta explained to host Neal Conan, "this is a form of what we call permanent, supportive housing, meaning that the housing is coupled very tightly with wraparound services in the home, in the form of, most typically, a case manager, who is a link for this new tenant to mainstream services... Mental health, medical health, addiction, vocational training, life skills, that sort of thing."

This approach works better than many traditional programs, and costs less in the long run.