NHCHC Support for the Unhoused Bill of Rights
Remarks from CEO Bobby Watts
July 28, 2021
Hello, I am Bobby Watts, CEO of the National Health Care for the Homeless Council, which is a network of federally qualified health centers, clinicians, medical respite care programs, researchers, and people with the lived expertise of homelessness.
Like the other organizations represented here today, we share the mission of preventing and ending homelessness. We thank Congresswoman Bush and her hardworking staff for putting together legislation that moves us towards that mission. I’d like to speak from the perspective of health care providers dedicated to building an equitable and high-quality health care system about two important health-related parts of the bill: Universal Health Care and Medical Respite.
UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE
The National Unhoused Bill of Rights acknowledges the importance of not just housing and other service programs, but universal health care as key to protecting our fellow Americans without homes.
Perhaps more than at any other time, during the pandemic we have seen the importance of acknowledging that housing is health care, and that both housing and health care must be provided as human rights in order to make our country healthy, equitable, just, and thriving.
Poor health and lack of access to health care cause many people to fall into homelessness, and make it hard to escape homelessness. Simply put, universal health care is an important component in ending homelessness.
MEDICAL RESPITE CARE
I am also here representing the National Institute for Medical Respite Care, a special initiative of the Council. Medical respite care, also known as recuperative care, is a service or facility for unhoused people who do not have a clinical reason to remain in a hospital, but are not well enough to recover on the streets, a friend’s couch, or in a shelter. Without a place to heal safely, they decompensate and end up back in the hospital in worse condition. There are many gaps in our health care system, and the need for respite care for people experiencing homelessness is one of them.
Medical respite care is offered in a variety of settings, including freestanding facilities, homeless shelters, and transitional housing, but there is no designated national funding stream for these programs. The Unhoused Bill of Rights is ground-breaking because it calls on health agencies to provide medical respite care in cities, counties, Indian tribal governments, and states so that unhoused people can fully recover from illness or injury without worrying about being discharged to the streets.
Thank you for this time. The National Health Care for the Homeless Council celebrates the introduction of this important bill, while also acknowledging we have a lot of work ahead of us to build an equitable society where no one is unhoused. We also thank our partners on Capitol Hill for moving us forward toward the goal of ending homelessness.