Corporation for Supportive Housing

Supportive housing—housing coupled with appropriate individual-based services—is an innovative and cost-effective model of care designed to provide an integrated solution for both housing and health care needs.

From 2012–2015, the New York State Department of Health invested more than $260 million of Medicaid State savings into supportive housing programs targeted at New York’s high-cost Medicaid members. However, the allocation and determination of these funds were largely based off of key stakeholder assumptions of where the greatest needs lie, but not necessarily based on data—at the time, no statewide centralized clearinghouse of data on the homeless population exists. To create a uniform, non-duplicative data system to estimate supportive housing needs at the regional and statewide level, NYHealth awarded the Corporation for Supportive Housing (CSH) a grant to conduct an assessment of homelessness in up to four geographic areas of New York State.

Under this grant, CSH worked with key stakeholders from New York State and City government agencies to establish a unified set of definitions and apply unique identifiers to avoid duplicate counting of homeless individuals. In addition, CSH reviewed existing local and national data to produce an estimate of the number of homeless individuals and families in different regions. The data analyzed in this assessment provided a means for the State to make educated decisions when determining supportive housing funding allocations and allow the State to better match resources to need. CSH disseminated a final report that included input from community stakeholders and government partners.

Read the report,”Real Supportive Housing Need in New York State.”