The city is taking steps to address healthcare in ways that go beyond a trip to the doctor’s office.
Mayor Adams and NYC Health + Hospitals announced the “Housing for Health” initiative at the T Building in Jamaica Hills last Thursday. The building, located on the campus of NYC Health + Hospitals/Queens, is a former tuberculosis hospital that has been converted into a 200-unit apartment building, with 75 units dedicated to supportive housing for patients of the hospital system who had been experiencing homelessness.
Residents started moving into the building over the summer. The other 125 units are dedicated for those with incomes from 60 percent to 80 percent of the area median income, which is $120,100 for a three-person family in New York City in 2022.
The initiative is four-pronged, with NYC Health + Hospitals pledging to counsel and help eligible patients find and apply for affordable supportive housing and dedicate respite beds to medically frail patients no longer in need of hospitalization but still in need of medical care, in addition to converting unused hospital land to affordable housing developments and funding social services at the sites.
Services at the T Building are handled by the Brooklyn-based nonprofit CAMBA and funded through a former Mayor de Blasio-developed supportive housing initiative.
