What is NYC's Housing for Health Initiative and whom does it serve? New approaches to homelessness gain ground

New York City's housing crisis has been an undeniable problem for decades.

- By ARIAMA C. LONG Amsterdam News Staff

It drives gentrification and displacement in historically Black and Brown neighborhoods, and forces homeowners and tenants to leave the city while others end up on the streets or in shelters. The latest uptick in the city's homeless population growth from 2022 to 2024 is attributed to increases in eviction proceedings after the COVID pandemic, a shortage of affordable housing, increased rents, and the previous influx of asylum seekers, according to a 2025 New York State Comptroller's report.

However, solutions might be on the horizon. NYC Health + Hospitals (H+H), which runs the city's safety net hospitals and clinics, has a Housing for Health initiative focused on developing supportive housing on underused hospital land specifically for the city's homeless individuals, many of whom are Black and Latino. Across the state, people experiencing homelessness last year also fell disproportionately into those racial and ethnic categories, with approximately 10% suffering from severe mental illness or chronic substance abuse, said the report.

One of the more popular solutions city leadership and advocates have come up with to house New Yorkers equitably amid the city's stark housing crisis is simply to build more housing-but that's only half the battle.

As a city entity, H+H was happy to use their "public land for public good" and help simultaneously tackle the housing and homelessness crisis, said Leora Jontef, assistant vice president for housing and real estate at NYC H+H. She estimates that the city's safety net hospitals provided care to about 1 million New Yorkers with or without insurance. In 2024, about 80,000 of these people were experiencing homelessness or housing insecurity - including more than 17,000 children. Their healthcare is often expensive, she said.