Challenge:

Kaiser Permanente, an $80B nonprofit, integrated healthcare organization (provider and payer), sought to address the role of social determinants of health in improving the health of its members and members of the communities they serve. My team and I were charged with identifying a social determinant(s) that would have the greatest long-term impact on health outcomes, and products, services, technologies and businesses that can deliver sustainably deliver better health outcomes.

Strategy:

Based on proprietary and third-party surveys of members’ social health (non-medical) needs, interviews, and population health and economic statistics for Kaiser Permanente’s markets, my team and I identified housing as the most strategically important and potentially highest impact social determinant–and the focus of our Community Health Accelerator.

While most of the organization’s executives and stakeholders supported the need to contribute to reducing homelessness in the communities in which they operated (all of Kaiser Permanente’s markets are also have high rates of homelessness and housing insecurity), there was initially less support for solutions that went beyond helping those already ill and homeless. This population seemed an obvious recipient for the healthcare organization’s support. But my team and I saw an opportunity for far greater impact that would benefit those with the most urgent need–and 100M more!

My Role:

I founded and led Kaiser Permanente’s Community Health Accelerator, in which we incubated and accelerated solutions for up to two problems per cycle. For Affordable Housing, the problem we set out to solve was: “Can the application of technology/innovation economy models to housing 10X improve the health of communities?”

We identified a multi-industry/disciplinary cohort of innovators, partners and anchors in our three-market ecosystem that included healthcare (hospital systems and safety net), construction technology startups (growth phase), financial services (credit unions, banks, mortgage lenders), traditional construction industry (for-profit/nonprofit builders, investors, developers), government (mayors’ housing leads, housing department managers) and anchor institutions.

Together, the cohort, my team and I studied existing solutions, mapped the ecosystems, opportunities and potential recipients’ needs and journeys.

Results:

Here’s what we found.

• While there was 560,000 homeless people in the US, there were over 100M people who are housing insecure–meaning they are unsure where they will sleep more than 1X during a given year, that they are facing eviction, and/or that they are untenably spending more than 50% of their income on housing.
• The US was under-supplied by 7.3M housing units–and the LIHTC designed to support affordable housing built only 3.2M homes in 33 years!
• Safe, clean, stable housing is critical to recovery and a factor in post-op readmission, use of pain medication and death

• Housing is a health and wealth-building asset with demonstrated capacity to improve an individual/family’s health in the present and for generations to come!

• None of the incentives (corporate equity, debt and impact funds, expedited permits and lower fees, LIHTC, state and local tax incentives, activism and political considerations) have driven/created any significant increase in affordable housing and/or long-term housing stability for consumers/recipients/residents or communities.

Here’s what we did.

Our research, advocacy and work with our cohort partners catalyzed and contributed to the investment of $500M in the form of the creation of the RxHome and Housing for Health debt and equity funds for the preservation and creation of affordable housing, investments in partner funds, grants to nonprofits focused on supportive housing, property purchases, policy advocacy and dissemination of our learnings to our ecosystem partners.

We built a community of 430 ecosystem partners via this and two additional solution cycles.