With old age come predictable declines in health, but supportive housing tenants who had suffered from homelessness are at a huge disadvantage compared to their peers. More often than not, many hard years of living on the streets leads to early onset of geriatric illnesses. What's more, mental illness and/or substance abuse disorders so prevalent in the chronically homeless population impair ability to effectively utilize the mainstream health care system. The homeless
are often unable to obtain medical care until a crisis brings them to the ER. This is not only expensive but ineffective.
The long-term homeless and formerly homeless are estimated to be
three to four times more likely to die of treatable diseases than their counterparts. These are the very people who Breaking Ground exists to help and who make their home in our many buildings across New York City. We are working to keep these men and women stably housed and out of expensive health care institutions.
That's why Breaking Ground, together with Janian Medical Care, inaugurated a two-year Elder Care Health Outreach (ECHO) pilot in 2013 to bring comprehensive medical and wellness programs to our most vulnerable senior tenants where they live.
The pilot results are promising: our tenants were happy with their care and had improved health outcomes and fewer hospital visits. Just imagine what we could achieve over the long term and with more people who so desperately need these wraparound services!
We found that intervening with medical care and wellness improves tenants' lives, may extend lives, and alleviates unnecessary suffering. It also likely saves taxpayer resources.
Last week, Breaking Ground published our ECHO results in a report -
"From Surviving the Streets to Aging in Place." We've begun to share these results at major industry events, including last week's annual Supportive Housing Network of New York conference and today's 2016 Corporation for Supportive Housing Summit in Chicago. The ECHO pilot was also highlighted in
this week's issue of Crain's New York Business. Today, ECHO is a permanent Breaking Ground program.
ECHO was initiated to compensate for a lack of sufficiently coordinated services and service levels within the mainstream health care system to address the complex mental and physical health circumstances of formerly homeless seniors in supportive housing. ECHO brings together the social service staff in supportive housing, onsite psychiatrists at these buildings, and primary care and tenant services in order to best assure aging in place.
We're proud of the benefits that ECHO has demonstrated for senior residents of supportive housing and we encourage you to read the ECHO report and to share the findings with a friend or colleague. The report, and an accompanying ECHO Tenant Services toolkit, is downloadable from our website at
breakingground.org.
Our sincere thanks to the funders of this novel initiative: the Charina Endowment Fund, MetLife Foundation, Mizuho USA Foundation, Inc. of Mizuho Financial Group, the John H. & Ethel G. Noble Charitable Trust, and The Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, Inc.
