Where you live can have a big impact on your health.

“You can’t be healthy without safe, stable, secure housing,” explained John Vu, Kaiser Permanente’s Vice President of Strategy for Community Health.

That’s why Kaiser Permanente, a health care provider, is helping create homes for people without them. In Metro Denver, as part of its partnership with Built for Zero, Kaiser Permanente invested in three apartment buildings that will provide 80 homes to veterans exiting homelessness.

“As a mission-driven health system, we know that people are only going to be as healthy as the places they come from. And part of that includes housing,” Vu said.

Housing to help solve homelessness

From the outside, the three apartment complexes look like any other. But these properties are unique because they bring housing directly to the system that serves people experiencing homelessness. 

Half of the units in each building are connected directly to the local homeless response system in Metro Denver. That means that when there’s a vacancy, homeless response leaders can quickly connect the unit to a person in need of housing. The other half of the units are affordable, workforce housing.

“You can’t be healthy without safe, stable, secure housing.”

John Vu, Kaiser Permanente’s vice president of strategy for Community Health

Metro Denver has been making progress in reducing veteran homelessness, but from the community’s data, they realized that they need more housing.

“In the metro Denver area, we saw working with local partners that they could only go so far in ending veteran homelessness without adding new housing units,” said Rosanne Haggerty, President of Community Solutions.

Partnering with Kaiser Permanente enabled the community to create more housing dedicated to veterans in need. By purchasing existing apartment buildings, they were able to get veterans into these homes much more quickly than in traditional ways of producing affordable housing. 

“Seeing these anchor institutions like Kaiser Permanente in the metro Denver area leading in the space of housing acquisition — of helping to solve that supply problem — is really a model for health care institutions nationally,” Haggerty said.

Kaiser Permanente is a core partner of Community Solutions. Since 2019, the organizations been working to help solve chronic and veteran homelessness in communities in their shared footprint across the United States.