Permanent Supportive Housing Staff and Clients' Perspectives on COVID-19: Recommendations and Lessons Learned

To prepare for future crises, providers who serve people experiencing homelessness may benefit from reviewing and incorporating lessons learned from responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. We present results of a rapid qualitative analysis of data from three focus groups with permanent supportive housing staff and four focus groups with clients in four large U.S. cities from July-August 2022. Clients and staff described how the pandemic challenged organizational practices and client-provider interactions, affected mental health and substance use, and produced mixed effects on housing and homelessness. Both clients and staff emphasized the importance of relationships and agreed that effective practices included providing vaccination at supportive housing sites and incorporating virtual options for therapy and support groups. Client and staff perspectives are synthesized to provide lessons learned and recommendations for responding to future public health events, like the COVID-19 pandemic; the analysis is framed using the socioecological model.