Housing Is Health Care: Why Addressing Homelessness Matters in Whole-Person Behavioral Health

For individuals experiencing homelessness, finding a safe place to sleep is only one piece of a much larger challenge. Housing instability can affect nearly every area of a person’s life—from physical and mental health to employment, transportation, medication management, recovery, and the ability to remain connected to treatment.

As behavioral health care continues moving toward a whole-person approach, understanding the relationship between housing and health is increasingly important.

For organizations such as Community Service Board of Middle Georgia (CSBMG), this means looking beyond a diagnosis or an immediate crisis and considering the circumstances that may be affecting an individual’s ability to become—and remain—well.

Homelessness and Health Are Closely Connected

People experiencing homelessness often face substantially greater health challenges than individuals who have stable housing.

Recent data highlighted by OPEN MINDS indicate that among people experiencing homelessness, approximately 53% experience overweight or obesity, 22% have hypertension, and 9% have asthma. These rates are higher than those reported among individuals who have never experienced homelessness (OPEN MINDS, 2026).

The consequences can be significant. Mortality rates among people experiencing homelessness may be as much as 10 times higher than rates among housed populations. Approximately 73% report unmet health care needs, and fragmented access to treatment can contribute to greater reliance on emergency departments and potentially avoidable hospitalizations (OPEN MINDS, 2026).

Annual health care expenditures for individuals experiencing homelessness have been estimated at more than $30,000 per person, illustrating how expensive health care can become when services are fragmented, delayed, or primarily delivered during a crisis (OPEN MINDS, 2026).

These statistics reinforce an important reality: housing instability is not separate from health care. It can directly influence health outcomes.

The Changing Face of Homelessness

The number of people experiencing homelessness in the United States increased by more than 30% between 2019 and 2025. Although the approximately 746,000 individuals estimated to be experiencing homelessness in 2025 represented a 3% decrease from 2024, other trends remain concerning (OPEN MINDS, 2026).

One of those trends is the increase in chronic homelessness.

The percentage of people experiencing homelessness who met the definition of chronic homelessness increased from approximately 19% in 2019 to 23% in 2025. Chronic homelessness generally involves prolonged or repeated periods of homelessness combined with a disabling condition, which may include a physical disability, mental illness, developmental disability, substance use disorder, or HIV/AIDS-related condition (OPEN MINDS, 2026).

Among individuals experiencing homelessness, approximately 56% were staying in emergency shelters, 8% were in transitional housing, and 67% were people of color (OPEN MINDS, 2026).

Behind every percentage is an individual whose circumstances may make accessing traditional health care extraordinarily difficult.

Why Housing Matters in Behavioral Health

Consider what we routinely ask individuals to do as part of treatment.

Take medications consistently. Attend appointments. Maintain a routine. Get adequate sleep. Eat nutritious meals. Avoid substances and environments that may trigger relapse. Keep important paperwork and medications secure. Find transportation to appointments. Remain connected to a support system.

Now consider trying to accomplish those things without knowing where you will sleep tonight.

Housing instability can make even basic treatment recommendations difficult to follow.

For someone managing serious mental illness, substance use disorder, an intellectual or developmental disability (I/DD), or multiple chronic health conditions, those barriers can become even greater.

This is one reason whole-person care matters.

Whole-person care recognizes that successful treatment often requires understanding not only what condition a person has, but also what is happening in that person’s life.

“Enlarging the Tent”

During the 2026 OPEN MINDS Whole Person Care Summit, Wayne Young, then Chief Executive Officer of The Harris Center for Mental Health and IDD, described an approach he called “enlarging the tent.”

The concept is simple but important: organizations cannot address complex health and social needs alone.

The Harris Center’s integrated care efforts demonstrate how behavioral health organizations can work across health care, social services, criminal justice systems, housing resources, and community organizations to identify individuals who may be interacting with several systems simultaneously (OPEN MINDS, 2026).

In some cases, individuals were receiving services from as many as eight different systems. Without collaboration, each organization may see only one piece of the individual’s circumstances.

When organizations communicate and coordinate effectively, the picture becomes clearer.

Integration Can Reduce Crisis Care

The connection between coordinated care and better outcomes is more than theoretical.

The Harris Center partnered with Optum on a health home initiative serving approximately 1,500 high-risk members whose annual health care spending exceeded $100,000. The program incorporated care management, risk stratification, and attention to social determinants of health, including housing. According to OPEN MINDS (2026), the partnership resulted in nearly 50% reductions in both emergency department visits and inpatient hospital utilization.

These statistics illustrate an important principle of whole-person care: addressing social needs does not compete with health care, it can strengthen it. When individuals have appropriate support before circumstances become a crisis, communities may be able to reduce repeated emergency interventions while helping people achieve greater stability.

Collaboration Is Especially Important in Rural Communities

The need for collaboration may be even more apparent in rural communities.

A person may need behavioral health treatment, primary care, transportation, housing assistance, substance use recovery support, employment resources, food assistance, or help navigating benefits—but those services may be spread across different organizations, counties, or systems.

No single organization can meet every need.

That makes partnerships essential.

Behavioral health providers, hospitals, law enforcement agencies, courts, schools, local governments, faith-based organizations, housing programs, nonprofits, recovery organizations, and other community partners each hold a piece of the solution.

When those organizations know one another, communicate, and understand available community resources, individuals have a better chance of being connected to the right service at the right time.

Data Helps Communities See What Individuals Experience

Another important lesson from integrated care models is the value of good data.

When organizations operate independently, one provider may not realize how frequently an individual is interacting with emergency departments, crisis services, shelters, law enforcement, behavioral health providers, or other systems.

Appropriate data sharing and care coordination can help identify patterns, recognize individuals at greatest risk, and guide interventions toward the areas where they may have the greatest impact (OPEN MINDS, 2026).

Data should not replace relationships. Instead, it can help organizations understand where relationships and resources are most urgently needed.

Whole-Person Care Means Seeing the Person Before the Problem

Homelessness is rarely the result of one circumstance, and resolving it rarely requires only one service.

Mental health, substance use, physical health, disability, transportation, employment, finances, family relationships, trauma, and access to community resources can intersect in complicated ways.

Effective behavioral health care requires recognizing those connections.

At Community Service Board of Middle Georgia, our work is grounded in meeting individuals where they are and connecting people with services and supports that can help them move toward greater stability, recovery, independence, and wellness.

Sometimes that begins with treatment.

Sometimes it begins with a crisis intervention.

And sometimes the greatest barrier to treatment is something that cannot be addressed inside a clinical office.

As communities continue developing whole-person systems of care, the question cannot simply be, “What service does this person need?”

We must also ask, “What is preventing this person from being able to use that service successfully?”

Housing may be one of those answers. Transportation is likely another.

By enlarging the tent—strengthening partnerships, sharing appropriate information, identifying community resources, and recognizing health-related social needs—we can build systems that respond not simply to a diagnosis, but to the whole person.

Reference

OPEN MINDS. (2026). Enlarging the tent. OPEN MINDS.