Healthcare Providers Get in the Housing Business

Affordable housing developers are partnering with healthcare organizations to build affordable housing that provides access to health facilities.

As Patrick Sisson explains in The New York Times, “health care systems are increasingly starting to see benefits in building affordable and safe housing, from the improved health of local communities to how much managed care groups benefit financially from those healthier populations.” In Oakland, California, Kaiser Permanente is investing $400 million to support the construction or preservation of 30,000 housing units by 2030.

Sisson adds, “This type of long-term capital, usually in the form of low-cost loans, has become even more valuable during a period of higher interest rates, financial uncertainty and rising costs for builders.”

A new Medicare pilot program could help boost this type of partnership. The 1115 waiver allows some health care providers to use Medicaid funds for housing. Like churches, hospitals also have an advantage: land they already own. “Boston Medical Center and Trinity Health both have plans to build affordable housing complexes on their own properties.”