Housing & Health Initiative

In October 2021, we brought a renewed focus to the critical connection between affordable housing and healthcare by launching the Housing and Health Initiative.

The overarching goal of this initiative is to increase healthcare partnership and investment in the development of affordable housing as the most impactful social determinant of health.

We advance this work through the following five strategies: 

• Bring together healthcare leaders around investment practices in upstream solutions to community health through affordable housing. 

• Bring together cross-sector networks of housing and health professions to build connections, share learning, advance partnerships, and provide peer support for creating upstream solutions.

• Promote a pipeline of projects that identify, foster, and document best practices that connect housing and health to better serve people and communities.

• Catalyze new and expanded investment with healthcare partners by connecting investment opportunities that link housing and health.

• Shift policy and systems that effectively link and grow housing and health solutions.

Since 2021, healthcare partners have invested over $22 million, supported the creation of 1,262 homes (including 115 permanent supportive housing units), and leveraged $361 million in total development costs serving 3,155 people.

Our Housing and Health Initiative promotes systemic connections that expand, sustain, and enhance innovation around affordable housing solutions. Research shows that 80% of health and wellness is happening outside a doctor’s office or hospital. Yet historically only 4% of resources in healthcare systems are used to address those areas of health that include other socioeconomic factors, such as housing.

In partnership with healthcare and housing leaders, we work to foster partnerships and coordinated investment to achieve shared outcomes around healthy housing and healthy communities.

Here’s what we can accomplish together through a shared framework:

The Housing and Health Guide builds on this framework and provides a summary of ways that healthcare can invest and be a catalytic contributor to expand housing and health opportunities for people and communities.

Fellows Program

In 2023, we created the Housing & Health Fellows program to bring together a cohort of healthcare leaders focused on building transformational housing strategies statewide. In partnership with the Center for Community Investment and Minnesota Housing, we provided a curriculum and coaching to 30 fellows from six of the top ten healthcare systems in Minnesota.

Fellows brought a vision, goal, or strategy that was further developed through the process, tools, and resources they co-created with each other. The cohort expanded their understanding of how their institutions could utilize their full range of financial and non-financial assets to advance affordable housing innovation and bring fresh perspective back to their respective organizations.

Fellows joined from these organizational partners: Allina Health, Blue Cross Blue Shield Minnesota, CentraCare, Children’s Minnesota, Essentia Health, and Fairview Health Services.

Ongoing Community of Practice

In 2024, our Housing and Health Fellows requested we continue to convene and grow healthcare participation in this work. This led to the creation of Healthcare for Housing Minnesota, a community of practice to advance housing stability as a critical social determinant of health. Each institution continues to advance their organization’s efforts in affordable housing and impact investment.

To address the needs of cost-burdened communities, Healthcare for Housing Minnesota comes together quarterly to focus on the following:

• Policy and Systems Work: Serving as champions and a collective voice on housing and community investment in social determinants of health
• Shared Investment and Programs: Connecting healthcare and housing partnerships for advancing an affordable housing pipeline of projects
• Promoting Learning: Continuing efforts to learn together and educate others on the critical role housing has on community health

Healthcare for Housing Minnesota members include representatives from Allina Health, Blue Cross Blue Shield Minnesota, CentraCare, Children’s Minnesota, Essentia Health, Fairview Health Services, Sanford Health, UCare, and the Minnesota Council of Health Plans. Read the Healthcare for Housing Minnesota purpose statement for more background.

Through this work, GMHF and healthcare partners have learned a great deal to keep moving forward. There are multiple ways healthcare can invest in and benefit from their investment in affordable housing. In addition, GMHF can offer assistance to healthcare institutions as they become investors and advance housing solutions in their communities. When housing and healthcare are connected and coordinated, families and communities can thrive.

We provide our capacity to make your work in affordable housing low-risk, highly efficient, showing productive mission-aligned community benefit returns. These are the ways we can work with healthcare institutions and partners to achieve shared goals:

• Bring together housing and healthcare leadership in cross-sector conversations to spark innovation and support new solutions in our fields of work
• Connect training, technical assistance, and best practice from national and local experts who are investing in upstream activities advancing community health
• Offer low-risk investment options with a default rate of less than 1% due to our strong fund management, diligence and experience as an affordable housing investment specialist
• Use our capacity, financing resources, and products to advance specific development with technical assistance for projects in our pipeline and of interest to you (through our Revolving Loan Fund)
• Foster and connect more cross-sector partnerships and connections among housing and healthcare organizations from our large network of affordable housing developers

View our case studies to see concrete examples of how the health and housing sectors have worked together both nationally and in Minnesota to deliver higher quality care at a lower cost by investing in communities and, in particular, increasing access to safe and stable housing.

GMHF and our healthcare partners have learned a great deal from opportunities and projects over the past few years. This includes key roles healthcare organizations can play, creative use of existing assets for investment in affordable housing, and the benefits and value propositions for healthcare to become an investor.

Join GMHF in investing in healthier communities through support of our Housing and Health Initiative.

Sign up our mailing list for periodic emails about opportunities and offerings from us and our partners.