Kaiser invests $ 200 million in affordable housing push
Oakland- based Kaiser Permanente said Friday it will invest $ 200 million in the coming years in programs to grow affordable housing and mitigate homelessness in Bay Area cities and other locations where the health system operates.
The exact projects into which the “impactinvesting” dollars will go have yet to be determined, but Bechara Choucair, a physician and Kaiser’s chief community health officer, said they will be focused on preserving and expanding affordable housing. Programs that prevent displacement of low- and middle- income families also will be a funding priority, the company said.
“The quality of where and how we live, work, learn and play has a big impact on our health,” Choucair said. “There’s no question that housing stability and health are totally connected.”
Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf said she asked
Kaiser CEO Bernard Tyson to join the new Mayors and CEOs for U. S. Housing Investment group, which made the investment announcement from Washington, where it is lobbying Congress for more federal funding for homelessness.
Schaaf said she was initially hesitant to seek Tyson’s assistance because Kaiser had already funded a number of other city projects — including more than $ 700,000 for a second Tuff Shed shelter site that opened last week to get homeless people off the streets.
“Kaiser is an amazing partner for us in looking at how we can be much more innovative in how we address homelessness and not just triaging people on the street but going upstream and preventing homelessness in the first place,” Schaaf said.
The funding pledge will easily be the largest ever made in Oakland in affordable housing by a private- sector entity, Schaaf said. She and Tyson said they are working to get other corporations to follow suit.
Tyson, who has visited the encampments of Oakland, said he wants the homeless to be part of the discussions on where the funding goes. He called the scale of homelessness in Oakland, San Francisco and elsewhere “unacceptable.”
“We fully comprehend now what total health means for our members and the communities in which we exist,” he said. “We’re not just here for health care, we’re also here for healthy communities.”