Addressing the complex housing and long-term health care needs of our rapidly growing senior population — particularly those who are homeless now — presents daunting challenges. How will we pay for it? What are the political implications? How do we incorporate vital community-based services?
In March, UCLA Ziman Center for Real Estate and Mercy Housing followed up on the success of their inaugural forum on affordable senior housing and long-term care delivery — held last February under the theme “preparing for the senior tsunami” — by presenting a timely forum titled Housing as Health Care. Experts explored how our current health and housing systems are preventing or limiting us from arriving at affordable solutions to the complicated problems of caring for seniors.
Keynote speaker Dr. Mitchell H. Katz, director of the Los Angeles County Health Agency, discussed national policy challenges and what Los Angeles is doing to address them. Setting a fine example of healthy mobility by biking to the on-campus event, Katz opened by saying, appropriately enough, that it’s time to move forward with solutions. “We have a cure for the chronic condition of homelessness,” he said. “And so the only question is, how do we implement this? What are the building blocks to housing all people who are homeless?”
He drew distinctions between those who are without shelter purely for economic reasons and those who “need more than just the affordable unit” (such as the permanent supportive housing Mercy has so successfully developed). He showed through a series of examples and scenarios that, both long and short term, housing people is less expensive than treating them for isolated mental or physical illnesses every time they face a medical crisis — in part because those crises diminish once a person is housed.
The panel of experts who followed Katz’s keynote presented some approaches other states and cities use to serve high-cost populations that need service-enriched housing to avoid expensive medical care, and enumerated the pragmatic strategies California can adopt to save tens of millions in Medicaid spending by finding housing solutions for seniors and people with disabilities who are trapped in expensive nursing homes.
Watch the Housing as Health Care keynote presentations and panel discussions
On Wednesday, April 27, UCLA Ziman Center presents UCLA Neighborhood Integrity Initiative Forum: Never Let a Good Crisis Go to Waste
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