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Margot Kushel, MD, director of the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, was quoted in the San Jose Mercury News discussing rollout of COVID vaccines for people experiencing homelessness. The Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative team recently surveyed unhoused people in Oakland and San Francisco and found they were more likely than the general population to want the vaccine.

Margot Kushel, MD, director of the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, was quoted regarding an outbreak of COVID-19 in San Diego’s large congregate shelter, which has prompted medical professionals and advocates to renew calls to expand usage of hotel placements for unhoused people. Dr. Kushel noted that even shelters with intensive strategies to control the spread of coronavirus were unlikely to prevent outbreaks.

California launched Project Roomkey during the pandemic to house thousands of homeless seniors and people with medical conditions in hotels. Margot Kushel, MD, director of the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, spoke on NPR about how critical it is that people in these hotels stay housed.

Margot Kushel, MD, director of the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, was quoted about California’s Project Roomkey and Project Homekey, including their prospects to make a lasting impact on homelessness across the state. “(Roomkey) really grabbed those who were at the highest risk of doing poorly and got them to safety,” said Dr. Kushel.

UCSF study demonstrates need for alternatives to congregate shelter arrangements. Even if shelters take extensive precautions to prevent COVID-19 outbreaks, cities may need to reduce their reliance on congregate shelters.

Margot Kushel, MD, director of the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, was interviewed on KQED's Forum along with other guests providing an update on programs to help the homeless during the pandemic and what’s being done to ensure permanent solutions to the housing crisis.

Margot Kushel, MD, director of the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, was interviewed about BHHI’s work with Community Health Outreach Workers and community organizations to deliver COVID-19 testing to unhoused people. “A lot of the lessons we learned will resonate very clearly, not just for COVID, but for any public health outreach, whether it’s vaccination campaigns, bringing health care services to people, or doing work on sexually transmitted infections and overdose prevention,” Dr. Kushel said.

The coronavirus pandemic is upending the Bay Area’s fight against homelessness. Many of the changes—good and bad—will outlast the pandemic, says Margot Kushel, MD, director of the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, who studies the intersection of homelessness and health.

Margot Kushel, MD, director of the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, was quoted about upcoming changes to hotel programs for unhoused people. With California’s Project Roomkey winding down, hotels for Bay Area residents experiencing homelessness are slated to close. Despite uncertain prospects for keeping people housed in the future, “Project Roomkey has played a huge role in decreasing the disasters in the Bay Area,” said Dr. Kushel, including slowing the spread of COVID-19.

Maria Raven, MD, Chief of Emergency Medicine at UCSF and a faculty advisor at BHHI, was quoted in this piece about a UCSF study about Project Welcome Home showing that permanent supportive housing can help keep chronically homeless people with severe health and substance-abuse issues housed. Margot Kushel, MD, coauthored the study.

This UCSF study examined whether permanent supportive housing reduces the use of acute health care and other services among people experiencing chronic homelessness. The Permanent Supportive Housing program intervention was able to house 86% of chronically homeless adults randomized to the treatment group based on their high use of multiple systems. Even the most frequent clients of medical, psychiatric, and emergency services were housed successfully, as demonstrated in this study of Project Welcome Home in Santa Clara County.

An increase in San Francisco homelessness funding could sharpen focus on permanent supportive housing. The UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative's Cynthia Nagendra emphasized the importance of permanent supportive housing as the centerpiece of any plan for using new funds to address homelessness.

Older homeless-experienced adults have low rates of advance care planning (ACP) engagement. In this cross-sectional qualitative study, researchers examined potential barriers and solutions to ACP engagement. Researchers found that participants believed that ACP is important, but acknowledge the multiple barriers to engagement. Potential solutions include capitalizing on opportunities outside health care setting and focusing on the period after housing and tailoring content.

KQED’s Sold Out housing podcast examined the interplay of Margot Kushel’s work within and beyond medicine as traditionally understood. “There is no medicine as powerful as housing,” Dr. Kushel said.

The UC Berkeley Social Science Matrix hosted Margot Kushel, MD, director of the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, for an in-depth discussion of homelessness in the Bay Area, emphasizing the causal factors of a chronic shortage of low-income housing and structural racism. “Homelessness is not caused by mental health and substance use problems,” Kushel explained. “The more we blame this problem on highly stigmatized medical conditions, the more it lets us off the hook for solving the fundamental problems that have brought us to this point.”

An innovative strategy to house Santa Clara County’s struggling homeless residents is working, according to a new study co-authored by Margot Kushel, MD, director of the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative. The results could impact how agencies in the Bay Area and beyond address homelessness.

The vast majority of even the most impaired homeless people can be successfully housed if they are given access to permanent housing with voluntary supportive services, a rigorous new study from UCSF has found. “The bottom line is that even really high-risk folks can be housed,” said Margot Kushel, MD, director of the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative.

For unhoused people living in areas impacted by wildfire smoke, “The choice is being in a congregate shelter or being outside, and [with] COVID it's pretty clear that it's safer to be outside than to be in a congregate shelter," said Margot Kushel, MD, director of the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative. "For people who are outside, it's just worsened their already precarious health situation."