HSH told the commission on Feb. 14 that it is deepening partnerships with the Department of Public Health (DPH) across shelter and housing programs, highlighted results from the Restore pilot, and announced a new inflow-outflow data dashboard.

Director Shereen McSpadden summarized collaborations that place behavioral health and medical services on-site: Shelter Health provides on-site testing, wound care, chronic disease management and medication management at 20 shelters and navigation centers and selected non-congregate sites, while DPH-supported teams such as night navigators and street medicine support outreach and overdose response.

Restore pilot: McSpadden said the Restore program, a co-located DPH-HSH bridge housing pilot at the Adante non-congregate shelter for people who use substances, expanded from a nine-room pilot to 26 rooms and has served 379 clients since launch. She reported that "84 percent of restore clients successfully initiated medication during their restore stay and 49 percent have exited to a stable location, either shelter, on medications, residential treatment, housing, or relocation services."

FACT services in PSH: HSH described the permanent housing advanced clinical services (FACS) collaboration, noting FACT teams are available across "150 plus PSH buildings, which house more than 11,000 residents." HSH reported FACS served 1,087 unduplicated PSH tenants in calendar year 2024 with 9,531 encounters and that the team comprises 26.5 FTE when fully staffed.

Data and dashboard: HSH launched a new homelessness trends dashboard to track inflow (people newly identified as homeless during a reporting period), outflow (people who no longer appear as actively homeless at the period end), and the "homeless at start" cohort. McSpadden said the tool is live on the HSH website and is intended to help the department better understand movement into and out of the homelessness response system.

Why it matters: The updates underscore coordinated clinical and outreach responses intended to reduce overdose risk and facilitate rapid connections to housing, and the dashboard aims to improve transparency about system dynamics and inform policy to slow inflow and speed outflow.

Next steps: HSH said it will continue to refine service partnerships with DPH and use the new dashboard to inform procurement and service design.