By Jennifer Paradis
Homelessness
Jennifer Paradis
The end of this legislative session left many short-changed, quite literally. The budget guardrails restricted spending abilities and left nearly all groups, particularly nonprofits, with cloudy futures. The homeless response system is certainly one of these groups. Our initial request for $50 million, necessary to maintain our current response levels with greater staffing, security and consistent programming, fell short. Ultimately, our system received $7 million, and we are all left to answer the same question – how can we continue to do more with less?
However, there is a glimmer of hope – a true acknowledgment of the homelessness problem statewide. House Bill 6601, An Act Declaring Homelessness as a Public Health Crisis, passed unanimously through the state House and Senate and is now headed to Gov. Ned Lamont’s desk for signature. By declaring homelessness a public health crisis, the bill ensures that the health of people experiencing homelessness is adequately safeguarded and protected. It also makes a corresponding change to the Homeless Bill of Rights to specify that a person has the right to receive essential medical and mental health care services instead of just emergency medical services, as under current law.
The Homeless Bill of Rights, passed by the state legislature and signed by former Gov. Dannel P. Malloy in 2013, guarantees homeless people seven specific rights: the right to move freely in public spaces without harassment or intimidation from police in the same manner as other residents; the right to equal opportunities for employment; the right to receive emergency medical care; the right to register to vote and to vote; the right to have personal information protected; the right to have a reasonable expectation of privacy in his or her personal property; and the right to receive equal treatment by state and municipal agencies.
This is important policy, and with the correct application, it can change the way in which services are implemented for our vulnerable populations. The former language of “emergency services” keeps our vulnerable population from preventative medicine and long-term treatment of chronic illnesses. Rather than treating every medical event through a costly emergency room visit, this could mean that greater efforts are made to reduce barriers to care and to improve the quality of care.
There are many reasons why access to non-emergency medical care is difficult for people experiencing homelessness. These barriers start with lack of health insurance and the difficult logistics of managing and getting to appointments on time, the necessary daily prioritization of finding food and shelter above health care and lack of trust in formal systems such as health care.
However, when health care is provided in a trauma-informed and person-centered way, the ability to coordinate housing and health care becomes two sides of the same coin, offering a breakthrough opportunity in the effort to solve homelessness.
Boston’s Housing Prescriptions for Health Care discovered the profound effects of this service model back in 2016. By coordinating housing and health care, this intervention reduced the number of children with fair or poor health by 32 percentage points within the first six months and ultimately led program participants to use emergency services like hospitals far less, benefiting all taxpayers.
As is with most legislation, passage of HB 6601 signifies the beginning – not the end – of the work. Declaring homelessness as a public health crisis is a pathway to understanding the necessity of housing for all. Now it becomes our responsibly as citizens to ensure the desired outcomes of the bill are realized.
Jennifer Paradis is the executive director of the Beth-El Center in Milford.