News

Margot Kushel, MD, director of the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, was a guest on KQED Forum discussing the role health care, low wages, and lack of affordable housing play in Oakland’s growing homelessness crisis. Dr. Kushel said, "There is a myth that the homeless population comes from other communities. That simply isn't true. What we see is about 70%-85% of people experiencing homelessness are from that community." She added that shelters are often "large, warehouse-like environments" where risk of COVID-19 transmission can be very high. Although some emergency shelter (preferably non-congregate) is needed, the solution to homelessness is permanent housing.

Margot Kushel, MD, director of the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, was quoted in this article about how California moved thousands of people experiencing homelessness into private hotel rooms during the COVID-19 pandemic—in an effort named “Project Roomkey”—which eventually provided temporary shelter to more than 48,000 people in hotel rooms leased by the state. Dr. Kushel said, “What you don’t see are that many, many of those folks who are out there are getting out of their tents and going to jobs.” 

San Francisco is buying hotels to house people experiencing homelessness, but some neighborhoods are resisting supportive housing efforts. Margot Kushel, MD, director of the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, said, "The usual opposition forces who really don’t want to be part of the solution have had time to mobilize and that’s going to be a problem not just in San Francisco, but other cities."

UCSF BHHI director Margot Kushel, MD, director of the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, says solving homelessness shouldn’t be just one neighborhood or community’s responsibility. “Everyone wants homelessness solved but people are worried. They have concerns and to be honest, neighborhoods block the things they most need, which is if they had housing in their neighborhood they would have fewer people facing homelessness,” Dr. Kushel said.

Margot Kushel, MD, director of the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, is among the panelists discussing how the partnership between UCSF scientists, government officials, advocacy organizations, and media has changed the way older adults experiencing homelessness received support from the City of Oakland. The film highlights how structural inequities can be addressed through influencing and widely scaling local policies and programs.

With cities implementing new camping bans and conducting new removals, advocates and homelessness experts are troubled by the new wave of enforcement around homelessness. In addition, temporary shelter still falls short of what is needed to move people off the street for good. “The goal should be to get everyone into permanent housing,” said Ned Resnikoff, policy manager at the University of California, San Francisco Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative. “If getting them sheltered doesn’t get you closer to that goal, then you actually haven’t solved anything.”

Several shelter-in-place hotels, where people with medical vulnerabilities have safely quarantined since the pandemic broke out, will close by the end of August, and the city’s largest congregate shelter has paused intakes for weeks due to positive COVID tests from residents. Margot Kushel, MD, director of the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, “Non-congregate shelter is a really important intervention. It has been throughout the pandemic and with the virulence of the delta variant is, arguably, more so now. Getting people into safety is important for all.”

In this podcast, Margot Kushel, MD, director of the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, explains the country’s rise in homelessness and the critical impact of housing on the health needs of vulnerable populations.

In this article about Project Homekey, Margot Kushel, MD, director of the University of California San Francisco's Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, described how the goal is to make sure even the “hardest-to-house” people will come inside. To that end, Dr. Kushel said Homekey gets the most important part right: providing permanent supportive housing, not temporary shelter. “Some people need services that go along with that housing, and some people don’t. But the really essential thing is that without the housing, the services don’t work,” she said.

An event in San Francisco called “Public Health is Public Safety,” brought together a dozen experts from homelessness services, policy, research, and jail health services backgrounds. Margot Kushel, MD, director of the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, discussed a successful “housing first” study conducted in Santa Clara, which found that simply providing housing to people who most needed it helped reduce emergency room visits and allowed people the chance to get mental health services.