Why It Matters
Why provide housing for healthcare workers?
Providing affordable housing for healthcare workers is crucial for multiple reasons, benefiting not only the workers themselves but also the healthcare system and the community as a whole. Baptist Health South Florida found that the cost of living has caused some current employees to seek living and employment elsewhere — and has seen applicants rescind job offer acceptances once they have researched the local housing market. The case for hospitals to engage on housing is no longer abstract. It is a workforce strategy.
01
Satisfaction & Retention
When healthcare workers have access to affordable housing, they experience less financial stress and can focus on their work. Higher job satisfaction follows, turnover drops, and organizations save on the recruitment and training costs of replacing staff.
02
Work-Life Balance
Affordable housing near workplaces shortens commutes, giving workers more time with families and outside interests. Better balance contributes to overall well-being and translates directly into productivity on the floor.
03
Quality of Patient Care
Well-rested, less stressed clinicians perform better. Workforce housing also helps attract and retain healthcare workers in urban and underserved areas — improving access to care for the communities that need it most.
04
System Responsiveness
When workers live closer to their jobs, it's easier for them to respond to emergencies, cover unexpected shifts, and support the kind of operational responsiveness modern healthcare systems demand.
05
Attracting Top Talent
Health systems are finding it difficult to recruit and retain talent, and high housing costs are part of the problem. Without a stable, affordable place to live — and eventually buy — workers struggle to build wealth, and employers struggle to maintain a stable workforce.
06
Community Ties
Housing healthcare workers near the facilities they serve fosters stronger ties to the surrounding neighborhood. That integration leads to a deeper understanding of community needs — and ultimately to better healthcare delivery.
By addressing the housing needs of healthcare workers, we not only recognize their contributions to society — we invest in a healthier, more resilient community.
What's Happening in the Field
Health systems are becoming housing developers.
One of the clearest trends shaping this work is hospitals and health systems building their own workforce housing. Faced with shortages they cannot recruit their way out of, systems across the country are deploying capital directly into residential development.
Moab Regional Hospital
Moab, Utah
Buying land to build staff housing in response to local housing shortages. The hospital sees the project as a recruiting tool — a way to bring possible hires to a market where housing scarcity has been a barrier to staffing.
University of Vermont Health System
Vermont
Committed $6 million toward a 120-apartment complex for employees and clinicians, with an integrated childcare center. It's the system's second project; a 61-unit complex is also in the pipeline.
Kaiser Permanente
Oakland, California
Investing $400 million to support the construction and preservation of 30,000 housing units by 2030. Long-term, low-cost loans of this kind have become even more valuable as interest rates and construction costs have risen.
Bon Secours Health System
Baltimore, Maryland
Owns multiple apartment buildings in the communities it serves — an example of a health system holding residential real estate directly as part of its mission.
Montefiore Health System
Bronx, New York
Created a community development corporation to renovate and stabilize apartment buildings in its catchment area — a structural approach that gives the health system durable capacity to act on housing.
Dignity Health
Multi-state
Through its Community Investment Program, Dignity has invested more than $100 million in affordable housing development — over $70 million of it in the form of loans to housing developers building in its service areas.
The Partnership Model
Hospitals are partnering with cities, nonprofits, and private developers.
Direct ownership is one path. Partnership is the other — and often the faster one. Some hospitals and healthcare providers are partnering with affordable housing developers to connect housing to health services and to expand the supply of affordable units for their workforce.
In San Francisco, a large hospital system partnered with the city government to develop a housing complex specifically for healthcare workers. The hospital worked with the city to identify and develop underused land; the city contributed tax incentives and an expedited planning process. The result was hundreds of affordable units for hospital staff, reducing commute times and improving quality of life.
In the Midwest, a nonprofit specializing in affordable housing worked with a regional healthcare system to renovate existing buildings near the system's facilities. The healthcare system provided financial support and guaranteed rental payments for its employees; the nonprofit kept the housing affordable and managed the operation. This kind of structure — risk-shared, mission-aligned — is becoming a template.
Engagement with private developers is also growing. Partnerships with private real estate developers can lead to mixed-use developments that include affordable housing units specifically for healthcare workers, often combined with retail, childcare, or clinic space. These structures let hospitals contribute capital, ground leases, or rental guarantees without having to build operational expertise in housing in-house.
A new Medicare pilot program may also encourage growth in partnerships between affordable housing developers and healthcare organizations. The program allows some healthcare providers to use Medicaid funds for housing — a meaningful expansion of what hospital capital can do.
Beyond Building
The work doesn't stop at construction.
In addition to building, financing, or rehabilitating affordable housing, hospitals are engaging with the housing landscape in a number of other ways — many of which complement direct development and extend a system's reach into the social determinants of health.
Adjacent Activities
How hospitals are showing up on housing beyond bricks and mortar
- Providing medical care to those in need of stable housing
- Offering health clinics at affordable housing sites
- Sharing data with housing partners
- Creating medical respite programs
- Educating their employees about homeownership programs
- Offering employees financial assistance for down payments or closing costs
Hospitals are motivated by a mix of mission, reputation, and competitive positioning. They want to advance their mission of improving health in the communities they serve. They want to strengthen public-sector relationships and deepen their connection to residents. And they want to enhance their reputations and competitive standing in markets where the talent pool is shrinking. These investments often generate small financial returns — directly through interest on loans, or indirectly through savings and avoided turnover costs.
The Honest Constraints
Why more hospitals haven't done this yet.
The barriers to hospital engagement on housing are real, and worth naming honestly. Hospitals consistently cite the same set of concerns:
Time commitment. Housing is a long-cycle business. Predevelopment alone can take 18 to 24 months, and most hospital leadership is not staffed or structured to absorb that timeline.
Scale of need. The number of households struggling to afford housing in any given service area dwarfs what a single hospital can reasonably address. The math feels discouraging before the work begins.
Perceived risk. Housing-related projects are perceived as risky by hospital boards and CFOs whose risk frameworks are built around clinical operations, not real estate development.
Limited internal resources. Most hospitals lack a development team, a real estate lawyer on retainer, or the financing relationships needed to navigate a LIHTC capital stack. Building that capacity from scratch is expensive.
Evidence gap. Hospital decision-makers want more rigorous evidence that housing initiatives improve health outcomes and reduce costs. The literature is growing but still patchy.
Each of these is a real constraint, and each is also exactly the kind of constraint an experienced housing partner is built to absorb. The hospital does not need to become a developer. It needs to find a developer who already knows how.
In Summary
Healthcare workers need homes. Health systems need workers.
The increasing involvement of healthcare facilities in providing affordable housing for their workforce is a positive trend. These efforts support the well-being of clinicians and staff, contribute to stronger communities, and improve healthcare delivery in markets where the alternative is a slow, steady loss of talent to higher-cost or higher-supply regions.
Partnering with experienced housing developers can help healthcare providers absorb the time, risk, and complexity of the work — and reach the goal of providing attainable, affordable housing for the people who keep their facilities running. Riverstone Platform Partners works with hospitals, health systems, and their nonprofit and municipal partners to structure workforce housing developments that close, lease up, and last. If you're exploring this conversation inside your own organization, we'd be glad to be part of it.