Media: Filling the Affordable Housing Financing Gap in the Gulf Coast Region
Shelterforce magazine has published an in-depth feature exploring Breakthrough Challenge winner Gulf Coast Housing Partnership’s winning idea, Health + Housing. The innovation combines affordable homes with onsite health care in communities of color that have historically lacked adequate health services. The driving force behind their innovation is below-market gap financing made possible by new partnerships formed with Medicaid managed care organizations Humana and UnitedHealthcare.
Key to those partnerships is showing health payors how they are mutually beneficial, Gulf Coast Housing Partnership’s Keven Krejci told Shelterforce.
“It’s easy to see an insurance company as this massive conglomerate that has billions of dollars and say, ‘Why don’t they just give us some?’ [But] you have to find ways where your activity can benefit them while their investment benefits the activity you’re trying to do. So you do a lot of listening.”
As the article reports, the $2.5 million award from the Breakthrough Challenge has allowed Gulf Coast Housing Partnership to bring its idea to life. Two new affordable housing developments with onsite health care plus data collection systems to measure health outcomes and savings are set to break ground in Jackson, Miss., and New Orleans in 2021. Both promise to demonstrate the success and scalability of this innovative model.
