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In California during the pandemic, Project Homekey has created housing for people experiencing homelessness by purchasing hotels and converting them to housing. Each room is life changing to a degree that almost no other intervention can provide. In long-term studies of homeless people who have moved to permanent housing, Margot Kushel, MD, director of the UCSF Benioff Homelessness Initiative has found that basically every determinant of health improves.

Margot Kushel, MD, director of the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, was interviewed about how the shortage of housing in California is structural problem for a state that has the largest population of people experiencing homelessness in the country. Dr. Kushel also described how sanctioned encampments have been somewhat controversial.

Margot Kushel, MD, director of the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, discussed how the Johnson & Johnson vaccine has been popular among homeless and low-income populations as it requires people to come in for only one shot. She said she understands the need to pause its use to probe the risks but hopes it will be cleared for use again soon. “We heard loud and clear from the community that only having to come in once is a big advantage,” she said. “But transparency and safety are important.”

Margot Kushel, MD, director of the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, was quoted regarding the success of Project Roomkey, which could become a model for future efforts to aid the estimated 150,000 homeless people in California. “It’s been a tremendous success,” Dr. Kushel said. “I do think that at the end of the day, it will become clear that this is the main reason we had fewer horrendous outcomes of people who were homeless.”

During an expert panel discussion examining COVID-19’s impact on our society and looking ahead to how we rebuild and prepare for future pandemics, Margot Kushel, MD, director of the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, said that inequality wasn’t only exposed by the pandemic, it was a driver of it. More housing is critical to staving off future health and economic crises, said Dr. Kushel. “There’s no medicine as powerful as housing. We can't have a healthy economy with a million housing units short that we have in California for extremely low income households.”

Margot Kushel, MD, director of the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, was quoted regarding San Francisco's plans to expand permanent supportive housing, including allowing more choices and giving out rental vouchers. Dr. Kushel said that while the city can choose to provide lighter staffing in the scattered sites, she added that programs have been successful around the country when paired with adequate services.

Among a group of medical experts from UCSF and Berkeley who expressed optimism that the COVID-19 pandemic could soon recede, Margot Kushel, MD, director of the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, pointed to initiatives like Project Roomkey as successful efforts in keeping unhoused residents sheltered and safe during the pandemic, but argued that much more is needed to ensure that society's most vulnerable groups are protected during the next large-scale public health crisis.

This article reports on weekly vaccination events in partnership with UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, Glide Memorial Church, the San Francisco Community Health Center, and the city's Department of Public Health to distribute COVID vaccines and support packages. Margot Kushel, MD, director of the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, said biotech companies have helped fund the efforts, allowing community-based organizations to hire trusted ambassadors to spread word about the vaccination events.

The UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative collaborated with the California Homeless Coordinating and Financing Council and the California Health Care Foundation to create resources to help homelessness response systems with COVID-19 vaccination planning. The third in a series, these materials describe important considerations in planning strategies for vaccinating unsheltered people, as all persons experiencing homelessness are now eligible for vaccination in California.

The State of California Homeless Coordinating and Financing Council, the California Health Care Foundation, and the Benioff Housing and Homelessness Initiative at UCSF have joined together to create a series of resources to help homelessness response system leaders and providers prepare and implement a strategy for vaccinating homelessness service workers and people experiencing homelessness in every California county and community. These planning materials are the frst resources of the series.

Caitlin Carey, PhD, a post-doctoral scholar at the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, spoke about how hostile architecture, which refers to design features created specifically to deter unhoused people from finding somewhere to sleep, harms people experiencing homelessness.

In recognition of her work on homelessness, Margot Kushel, MD, director of the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative was named Woman of the Year for California’s Senate District 9.

Margot Kushel, MD, director of the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, was quoted in this article describing how, despite detailed statistics on the demographics and comorbidities of the nation’s more than 500,000 COVID-19 deaths, it is unknown how many of those deaths occurred among unhoused people.

On the anniversary of the pandemic, Margot Kushel, MD, director of the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, and other public health and infectious disease experts recall when they realized that COVID-19 was going to be trouble. Dr. Kushel said, "Pandemics thrive on inequality, on structural racism, on all the divisions that we have."

Hemal Kanzaria, MD, Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine and faculty advisor at UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, discussed findings of a new UCSF study describing how the hotel isolation and quarantine strategy used for homeless residents of San Francisco during the COVID-19 pandemic benefitted the entire community.

Maria Raven, MD, Chief of Emergency Medicine at UCSF and a faculty advisor at BHHI, was quoted in this piece describing how hotels leased during the pandemic to prevent the spread of coronavirus provided shelter for unhoused people at risk of severe COVID-19. Dr. Raven said, "When someone is sick and vulnerable, let's get them housed and keep them housed."