What is NYC’s Housing for Health Initiative?

New York City’s housing crisis has been undeniable for decades. It drives gentrification and displacement in historically Black and Brown neighborhoods, and forces homeowners and tenants to leave the city while others end up on the streets or in shelters. The latest uptick in the city’s homeless population growth from 2022 to 2024 is attributed to increases in eviction proceedings after the COVID pandemic, a shortage of affordable housing, increased rents, and the previous influx of asylum seekers, according to a 2025 New York State Comptroller’s report.

NYC Health + Hospitals (H+H), which runs the city’s safety net hospitals and clinics, has a Housing for Health initiative focused on developing supportive housing on underused hospital land specifically for the city’s homeless individuals, many of whom are Black and Latino. Across the state, people experiencing homelessness last year also fell disproportionately into those racial and ethnic categories, with approximately 10% suffering from severe mental illness or chronic substance abuse, said the state comptroller’s report.

One of the more popular solutions city leadership and advocates have come up with to house New Yorkers equitably amid the city’s stark housing crisis is simply to build more housing — but that’s only half the battle.

As a city entity, H+H was happy to use their “public land for public good” and help simultaneously tackle the housing and homelessness crisis, said Leora Jontef, assistant vice president for housing and real estate at NYC H+H. She estimates that the city’s safety net hospitals provided care to about 1 million New Yorkers with or without insurance. In 2024, about 80,000 of these people were experiencing homelessness or housing insecurity — including more than 17,000 children. Their healthcare is often expensive, she said.

“This is the population that comes to the emergency department three times more than housed New Yorkers. They are frequent users of our system,” said Jontef. “And then, when they’re really sick, if you’re unhoused … you often have situations where you have to be admitted.”

In a pilot program, H+H followed 200 formerly unhoused patients over six months. In addition to improving participants’ lives by finding them housing, the program reduced hospitalizations, emergency room visits, and lengthy hospital stays, Jontef said. The patients’ housing situations ranged from supportive, with onsite medical services, to receiving rent-subsidized apartments.

“I feel like home. I could go to sleep, I could wake up anytime. I could cook my meals,” said Jesus Cerda, who immigrated from the Dominican Republic to the United States with his father. He found himself homeless and suffering from mental illness at the age of 16. In 2022, he lived in a studio apartment in a former tuberculosis hospital in Queens and is highlighted as one of H+H’s success stories.

“I think having this, everything, a bed — a big bed, compared to a twin bed in the shelter — that makes me feel happy … that’s improving my mental health and also my physical health,” said Cerda. “This apartment makes me feel like a king because I’m in control. It’s something that I never had before.”

As of the end of June 2025, more than 3,000 patients and their families have benefited from the initiative’s housing navigation and medical respite programming, and nearly 1,500 patient households have received stable housing, said H+H.

“It is a privilege to be in a more nontraditional place to really support people who are coming to us with a lot of faith and trust at a moment of vulnerability, and we [can say], ‘Okay, we’re going to help you. What do you need?’” said Jontef. 


New responses

In March 2025, the housing initiative celebrated the opening of Woodhull Phase II on Woodhull Hospital land in Brooklyn. It is expected to break ground on the Just Home project on Jacobi Hospital’s land in the Bronx.

H+H is also advancing its proposal for the Morrisania River Commons project, a 328-unit affordable and supportive housing development project and clinic in the Bronx that was a part of the 2018 Jerome Avenue Neighborhood Plan and Rezoning.

In 2023, the Morrisania and Crotona neighborhoods of the South Bronx were about 30% Black and 61% Latino, according to New York University’s Furman Center. About 36% of renter households in the community district were severely rent-burdened that year. Between 2010 and 2024, rents for more than 8,000 units in more than four buildings went up; 15% were market rate and 78% were “income-targeted,” reported Furman.

The proposed building would be located on Gerard Avenue, replacing the clinic’s parking lot and annex. It would include a mix of studios, one-bedroom, two-bedroom, and three-bedroom apartments. The project is supported by River Commons Owners LLC, Type A Projects, BronxWorks, and L & M.

“We know that smart housing policy is smart health policy,” said Ahmed Tigani, the city’s Acting Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) Commissioner, in a statement. “We’ve seen how closely they’re tied — when people have a stable home, they’re more likely to stay well, get care when they need it, and be part of a stronger, safer community. This project isn’t just about solving a crisis — it’s about preventing the next one.”

Challenges to overcome

Still, the downside of these types of projects are that they take a long time to get approved, financed, and built when people are in dire need of housing today.

“We have the land, but financing is always a limitation, and there’s limited city resources,” said Jontef. “All of these programs have significant city subsidies, which are great, like housing rental subsidies and housing finance tools. There’s just a lot of projects that are in the queue.”

Adolpho Abreu, housing campaign director at VOCAL NY, said the Housing for Health initiative builds on proven models for creating permanent housing for those experiencing homelessness. “It gets us to having healthier communities. We’re ensuring vulnerable populations, especially those experiencing mental health crises or just need on-site medical services, are provided for and won’t necessarily have to travel far [to receive services],” said Abreu.

He believes that the initiative could be effective but might run into some issues with community support, since there tends to be a “lack of compassion for folks experiencing homelessness, those with mental health issues, or folks with active drug use.” He also lamented that building affordable housing takes so long when more than 2,500 units of supportive housing in the city remain vacant, according to the City Comptroller’s 2025 report.

Councilmember Althea Stevens, who oversees City Council District 16 where the proposed Morrisania River Commons project is slated to be built, came into office after the Jerome Avenue rezoning plans were put in place. She has faith in the project overall, but remains concerned about the impact more supportive housing will have on the district. Ideally, Stevens would like to see more family-sized apartments as opposed to studios, more programs promoting homeownership, and varied levels of incomes in the buildings.

There are close to 17 shelters in Districts 16, 15, and 17 in the Bronx. “We went from being a district that had an overwhelming amount of shelters to now being a district that is building an overwhelming amount of supportive housing,” said Stevens. “I’m not opposed to supportive housing. It’s a real necessity, but we can’t always be the district. There needs to be diversity in where these things are being built, and we need additional resources.”

Next steps

The proposed housing project requires a vote in the City Council and mayoral approval to move forward with construction.

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