Santa Clara Hospitals Give Homeless a Respite
Part Two in a Series Highlights a Collaborative Respite Program in San Jose
Über-prosperous Silicon Valley isn¹t a place one expects to find thousands of homeless people. But a 2006 Housing and Urban Development (HUD) count found over 7,600 men, women, and children without a home in Santa Clara County, which includes not just Silicon Valley but Palo Alto and San Jose.
Unnerved by the count, the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors commissioned a Blue Ribbon panel on Ending Homelessness and Solving the Affordable Housing Crisis. One of the panel’s recommendations was that a facility for homeless people just released from the hospital be started, so there would be a place for them to recuperate fully. Surprisingly, in 2008, seven private and public hospitals from up and down the county, including Stanford University Hospital, began collaborating on the Santa Clara County Medical Respite Center.
In its first two years, the center spared participating hospitals 783 bed days. As the average cost of a bed day in that area is between $3,000 and $1,000, that works out to be roughly a million dollars in savings in the program’s first two years.
