Sacramento Briefing: CalAIM Housing Community Supports

CalAIM (California Advancing and Innovating Medi-Cal) is the state’s five-year initiative to improve Medi-Cal. As part of CalAIM, Medi-Cal managed care plans can choose to provide 1 or more of 14 Community Supports to address members’ health-related social needs. Three of these Community Supports are crucially important to people experiencing homelessness: housing transition and navigation services, housing deposits, and housing tenancy and sustaining services. They are collectively known as the housing trio.

Multiple studies show that tenancy-sustaining, housing navigation, and outreach and engagement services significantly improve the stability of people after they become housed. Other research shows that the provision of affordable housing decreased Medicaid expenditures by 12%.

Join CHCF in Sacramento on Wednesday, March 12, for a briefing about these supports and their importance for helping people move from homelessness to housing. The briefing will begin with an overview of how homelessness impacts a person’s health by Margot Kushel, MD, professor of medicine and director of the Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative at UCSF. She will draw from the landmark California Statewide Survey of People Experiencing Homelessness.

Following the presentation, Michelle Schneidermann, MD, director of people-centered care at CHCF, will moderate a discussion about the role Medi-Cal is playing in California’s homelessness response and how that role can be strengthened and improved through critical partnerships across the health, homelessness, and housing sectors.

Panelists include:

Susan Philip, MPP, Deputy Director of Health Care Delivery Systems, California Department of Health Care Services

Dhakshike Wickrema, MCP, Deputy Secretary of Homelessness, California Business, Consumer Services and Housing Agency

Cheryl Winter, MPH, LCSW, Associate Director, California State Policy, CSH (Corporation for Supportive Housing)

Margot Kushel, MD, Professor of Medicine and Director of Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, UCSF

Host or Publisher California Health Care Foundation