Addressing the Affordable Housing Crisis
The United States is said to be short 7 million housing units.1 California alone represents an estimated shortage of between 1 million and 3.5 million housing units—and it needs to spend more than $18 billion a year for 10 years to fill the gap.2
States lack the resources to operationalize that budget to pay for resources from interoperable systems to construction workforces. Lack of affordable housing, devastating environmental disasters, and behavioral health challenges are exacerbating the crisis of homelessness.
But there’s hope. As national thought leaders in housing and homelessness, AHP experts work with your team to find the best combination of solutions. Together, we can solve housing shortfalls.
For over 35 years, AHP has been improving health and human services systems of care to help organizations and individuals reach their full potential. Our technical assistance and administrative services can unlock solutions to your affordable housing challenges.
We Build Communities, Not Just Housing
At AHP, we believe underserved communities deserve safe, decent, affordable housing, and it is our mission to address this critical and expanding need—which will take much more than simply building housing units.
From policy to performance, we can help you research, coordinate, implement, and measure the impact of holistic initiatives for individuals from marginalized groups to be placed in housing communities that promote their emotional wellness and get them back on their feet.
Affordable housing development takes bold vision and even bolder action. With our experience in designing and applying real-world strategies—informed by firsthand understanding of disadvantaged populations and expertise in behavioral health and homelessness—AHP can provide the strategic support and technology required to make this vision a reality.
Where Public Need Meets Private Potential
Let us help you with your greatest challenges:
- Forming stronger partnerships with healthcare and housing entities, health and human services organizations, and the state
- Braiding funding to support housing capital, rental assistance, and supportive services, including those not covered under Medicaid
- Contracting with managed care, third-party administrators, providers, and more
- Establishing payment models, rate-setting, and value-based purchasing strategies
- Coordinating housing and services approaches
- Building provider network capacity to deliver and track services and receive payment
- Leveraging and sharing data across agencies and providers to identify target populations and service needs
- Advancing equity in program tools and design
- Identifying strategies to support transition from institutional settings to the community
- Implementing evaluation methods to assess performance and impact
- Developing partnerships to support short- and long-term rental assistance
- Fostering collaboration for a whole-government approach to addressing health and housing priorities
- Fostering integration among, and sustainable partnerships with, key health and housing entities
- Leveraging state Medicaid transformation and value-based purchasing initiatives to support health and housing priorities
- Spearheading transformation initiatives like state plan amendments, managed care, and waivers
- Aligning resources with health and housing partner(s)
- Spurring capital investment strategies for healthy affordable housing
Successful Systems Change in California
Through 2021 state legislation, the California Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) was authorized to establish the Behavioral Health Continuum Infrastructure Program (BHCIP) and award $2.2 billion in grants over six rounds of funding.
New and expanded construction in BHCIP Rounds 3–5 will have the capacity to serve 281,146 unique individuals annually in outpatient settings, with the creation of 2,577 residential beds to serve hundreds of thousands of individuals each year. AHP has helped and continues to help grantees acquire real estate to meet DHCS program requirements and service needs.
Projections show 27 BHCIP projects will finish construction in 2024, with an additional 103 projects anticipated to complete construction between 2025 and 2027.*
*All data accurate as of March 20, 2024.
Housing people experiencing homelessness isn’t impossible. We know because we help clients help their communities every day. You have the vision to increase affordable housing access, and we have the expertise in navigating complex multi-agency policies, program requirements, funding, and systems of infrastructure, technology, and providers.
Together, let’s build effective behavioral health and housing infrastructure.
1 Sequeira, R. (2024, January 24). The US needs homes. But first, it needs the workers to build them. Stateline. https://stateline.org/2024/01/24/the-us-needs-homes-but-first-it-needs-the-workers-to-build-them/
2 Tobias, M. (2022, October 31). Newsom campaigned on building 3.5 million homes. He hasn’t gotten even close. CalMatters. https://calmatters.org/housing/2022/10/newsom-california-housing-crisis/ ; Up for Growth. (n.d.). 2022 Housing Underproduction™ in the U.S. https://upforgrowth.org/apply-the-vision/housing-underproduction/
About Us
Advocates for Human Potential, Inc. (AHP) creates powerful solutions to improve health and human services systems. By partnering with the federal government, states, municipalities, healthcare systems, and nonprofits, we help people experiencing the greatest disadvantages lead full and productive lives. We are national leaders in training and technical assistance, research and evaluation, publishing, and dedicated consulting. On issues from workforce development to mental health, substance use disorders to housing and homelessness, we help our clients enhance behavioral health care through systems change. AHP was founded nearly 40 years ago to develop solutions for some of the biggest social infrastructure challenges across the nation. Our company has offices in metro Boston, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Find out more at www.ahpnet.com.
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