Contra Costa Health Plan Partners With Upside as First CalAIM Housing Supports Provider

March 07, 2025

The partnership marked Upside’s entry into California’s Medi-Cal Community Supports program, bringing housing navigation, deposits, and tenancy support to eligible members in Contra Costa County.

FORT LAUDERDALE, FL and MARTINEZ, CA — Upside, a nationally scalable housing stability platform purpose-built for healthcare, today announced its partnership with Contra Costa Health Plan (CCHP), the county-sponsored Medi-Cal managed care plan serving Contra Costa County. Under the partnership, Upside delivers the CalAIM Community Supports Housing Trio — Housing Transition Navigation Services, Housing Tenancy and Sustaining Services, and Housing Deposits — to eligible CCHP members. The program launched in March 2025 and made CCHP Upside’s first CalAIM partner.

CalAIM, California’s reorganization of Medi-Cal, lets managed care plans offer housing services as Community Supports when they are clinically appropriate. The logic is straightforward: members without a stable home miss appointments, lose track of medications, and return to the emergency department for care that housing could have prevented. The partnership gives CCHP members a dedicated housing team that stays with each case until the member is housed and settled.

“Contra Costa Health Plan has a long record of being first — and they were the first California plan to bring us in,” said Jake Rothstein, Co-Founder and CEO of Upside. “Too many housing programs stop at the referral and call it done. We measure our work by whether the lease got signed and whether the member is still there months later. CCHP holds the same standard, and that shared focus shaped how we built our work in California.”

How the program serves members

CCHP refers eligible members to Upside through its provider portal, and Upside confirms each member’s Community Supports authorization before services begin. An Upside Care Guide — a licensed social worker or housing specialist — then contacts the member, learns what they need, and builds a housing plan around their goals. From there, the Care Guide does the hands-on work with the member: searching for units, completing applications, gathering documents, and working with landlords. Housing Deposits help cover the upfront costs of moving in, and Tenancy and Sustaining Services keep the Care Guide involved after the move so the new home lasts.

“Health plans don’t need another vendor asking them to change how they work,” said Patrick Regan, EVP of Sales of Upside. “With CCHP, we built our intake around their systems, their authorization process, and their reporting standards from day one. That meant their care teams could refer members the way they already do, and we could focus on getting those members housed. It’s the model we’ve carried into every California partnership since.”

Upside operates as a credentialed Community Supports Provider under the California Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) framework and follows DHCS documentation and reporting standards for each Housing Trio service. The CCHP partnership laid the groundwork for Upside’s growing work with Medi-Cal plans across California and adds to its broader footprint across Medicaid, Medicare Advantage, and employer-sponsored populations nationwide.

About Contra Costa Health Plan

Contra Costa Health Plan (CCHP) is a county-sponsored health maintenance organization operated by Contra Costa Health and the primary Medi-Cal managed care plan in Contra Costa County. CCHP was the nation’s first federally qualified, state-licensed, county-sponsored HMO, and in 1973 became the first county-sponsored health plan in California to offer Medi-Cal managed care. Today, CCHP serves about 271,000 members, including 265,000 Medi-Cal enrollees, and is recognized by the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) as one of the highest-rated Medicaid health plans in the country. For more information, visit www.cchealth.org.