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Could you stay healthy with no place to stay?

We improve equitable health care access to support health and housing stability for people experiencing homelessness in Washington State.

Our Work

What We Do

We use an interdisciplinary approach to advocate for change at the systems level. Working with a wide spectrum of partners, including health care providers, housing providers, schools, policymakers, advocates, and community members, we:

  • Advocate for adequate and sustainable resources for health systems
  • Share knowledge on addressing homelessness within the health context
  • Hold health systems accountable to advance and adopt racially equitable and culturally responsive policies, practices, and prioritization and eligibility criteria
  • Facilitate cross-systems collaboration

Why We Do It

Housing stability influences people’s health, and health influences people’s housing stability. Children, youth, and families — especially those of color — are inadequately served by health systems. This is due to health systems being insufficiently resourced, lack of knowledge on how to address homelessness in a health context, and lack of cross-systems collaboration. Racial and ethnic biases embedded within policies, practices, and processes that determine who gets access to services compound inadequacies.

Did You Know?

  • Pregnancy can increase a woman’s risk of becoming homeless, and pregnant women face significantly greater health risks while unstably housed.1 
  • Half of school-age homeless children experience anxiety, depression, or withdrawal compared to 18 percent of non-homeless children.2 
  • Homelessness and hunger are closely intertwined. Homeless children are twice as likely to experience hunger as their non-homeless peers. Hunger has negative effects on the physical, social, emotional and cognitive development of children.3

1 Clark, R. E., Weinreb, L., Flahive, J. M., & Seifert, R. W. (2019). Homelessness Contributes to Pregnancy Complications. Health Affairs, 139-146.

2 The National Child Traumatic Stress Network, Facts on Trauma and Homeless Children

3 American Psychological Association, Effects of Poverty, Hunger and Homelessness on Children and Youth

Featured Resources

  • Article

Q&A: Building Changes’ health learnings so far

Exploring why integrating health care into housing support is so important, and what that means...

  • Health
  • Housing Crisis
  • Diversion
  • Families
  • Youth/Young Adults

Publish Date: August 29, 2023
  • Webinar

Landscape of Health & Housing Services Integration in Washington State

In this webinar, Building Changes’ Senior Health Strategy Specialist, Miranda Vargas, discusses statewide efforts to...

  • Health
  • Housing Crisis
  • Families
  • Youth/Young Adults

Publish Date: August 25, 2023
  • Brief

Integrating Diversion into Maternal Health Programs in Yakima & Pierce Counties

Building Changes successfully worked with two communities in Washington State on projects that integrated Diversion...

  • Health
  • Housing Crisis
  • Families
  • Maternal Health
  • Policy

Publish Date: December 17, 2023

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