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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."

Researchers from UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative and the San Francisco Department of Public Health found that housing homeless residents with mild to moderate COVID-19 in hotel rooms lowered the burden on hospitals overwhelmed with more seriously ill patients. The findings, published in JAMA Network Open, underscore the public health benefits of providing stable housing and services to those who need them most.

A new study from authors at the San Francisco Department of Public Health the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative showed that San Francisco’s early use of isolation and quarantine hotels for unhoused residents who showed symptoms of or had been exposed to Covid-19 may have significantly freed up hospital capacity and prevented transmission.

COVID-19 impacted access to medical care and social services, potentially worsening HIV outcomes among people experiencing homelessness. In San Francisco, Ward 86, initiated POP-UP, a low-barrier, multicomponent model of care to address barriers to care for people living with HIV experiencing homelessness. Researchers found that care engagement and viral suppression did not worsen among the 85 patients enrolled, despite concerns that the COVID-19 pandemic might worsen outcomes. The study suggests that multicomponent interventions may help maintain viral suppression despite unanticipated structural barriers.

A new study from UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative and the San Francisco Department of Public Health describes how San Francisco rapidly scaled a hotel-based isolation and quarantine (I/Q) system of care for people experiencing homelessness during the COVID-19 pandemic. Researchers found the program safely delivered integrated medical and behavioral health support to more than 1000 individuals outside the hospital setting, while helping to preserve hospital capacity.

Graham Pruss, PhD, a post-doctoral scholar at the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, spoke about the rapid growth of vehicle residency over the last decade, especially during the pandemic. Many people without permanent homes are turning to cars, vans, RVs, and campers as a form of affordable housing instead of shelters or encampments, but parking restrictions and lack of infrastructure remain challenges.