Housing as a health intervention is no longer a radical idea, it’s becoming table stakes. But in my experience working directly with health plans, what still is radical is executing on housing in a way that’s truly coordinated, scalable, and measurable.
Too often, we’re still seeing housing strategies that are fragmented at best, piecemeal networks of vendors, overlapping community-based organizations, and disconnected data systems that make it nearly impossible to assess what’s working and what’s not.
And that’s a real problem. Because when the approach is disjointed, so is the member experience.
When my team and I meet with health plan leaders, one of the first things we look for are the telltale signs of a fragmented housing approach:
Plans might be coordinating with 30, 40, even more community organizations each with their own process. The result is a lot of well-intentioned effort, but not a lot of operational clarity.
From the member’s perspective, this looks like long waits, inconsistent information, and eroding trust. From the plan’s perspective, it becomes nearly impossible to manage at scale or show measurable outcomes tied to investment.
When we talk about centralizing housing operations, I know some leaders immediately think:
“Isn’t that just a one-size-fits-all solution?”
But centralization doesn’t mean rigidity. It means consistent execution. It means adaptable infrastructure supported by a shared foundation. It’s not about removing local nuance, it’s about giving it structure and predictability.
When the backend is unified workflows, communication loops, data standards, plans can launch faster, scale smarter, and measure what matters. More importantly, they can finally move beyond vendor management and start building actual systems of care.
We recently worked with a national plan that asked us to take on one of their most challenging markets. The ask wasn’t just to house members it was to do it faster than any previous model, with full transparency along the way.
Three months in, we had members stably housed. We were able to keep them engaged, something case managers told us was nearly impossible in that region. One even said, “Normally, I can’t get someone to stay on the phone for two minutes, let alone 20.”
That wasn’t luck. It was process. Clear roles, centralized workflows, and a system built to adapt in real time. It’s not perfect but it’s working. And it’s replicable.
“Data is king” has become a cliché but for good reason. What’s not talked about enough is how plans often end up with a flood of siloed data that’s hard to act on.
You might have dozens of vendors each submitting reports that meet their own standards not necessarily what’s useful to the plan or connected to member outcomes. Leadership teams then face a deluge of dashboards, none of which tell a cohesive story.
Where I see real value is in actionable, real-time data: tracking how long it takes to get someone housed, understanding the common barriers (like credit issues or legal history), and seeing what interventions are actually working in specific markets.
To me, it’s not just about surfacing data it’s about creating a shared language of performance, so everyone involved can make smarter, faster decisions.
If you’re leading housing strategy at a health plan today, I’d encourage a shift in mindset: from vendor management to systems design. The more time spent stitching together disconnected tools, the less time is spent actually solving the problem.
The opportunity is to move from patchwork to purpose-built. Not by eliminating community partners, but by giving them structure, support, and shared systems to work within.
It’s not flashy work. It’s operational work. But that’s where the leverage is and in my experience, that’s how we actually get people housed and healthier faster.
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