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Health care systems in South Jersey are rewriting the rules of care delivery and expanding their focus beyond traditional medicine into housing and community services.

As more patients show up without a consistent place to live, AtlantiCare and Cooper University Health Care are responding not only with treatment, but with housing to support them.

“Housing and health are deeply interconnected. Poor housing conditions, such as mold, asbestos, and lead paint, can lead to chronic health issues,” said Samantha Kiley, president of Atlantic City Midtown CDC and vice president of Community Health and Social Impact, AtlantiCare. “The stress of not knowing where you’re going to live, or if you’ll be able to keep your home, affects mental health and emotional well-being and when people are forced to choose between paying for housing or paying for food, medications, or transportation, their health suffers. We don’t always talk about it this way, but stable housing contributes to social health, too.”

AtlantiCare offers homebuyer education and financial coaching for its staff, acknowledging that health care workers themselves face housing affordability challenges. Cooper is investing in digital tools and referral networks to connect patients with services across Camden.

AtlantiCare began offering down payment assistance for employees in 2019 after performing a Community Health Needs Assessment. In 2023, after another CHNA showed housing as a top priority for the community, they began launching programs to tackle the issue. Similarly, Cooper University launched its “Unite” program in 2020.

Success in these programs is not just measured by traditional health outcomes. While emergency department use, readmissions and length of stay still matter, health systems are now tracking whether patients have stable housing, how long they retain it, and what kinds of community support they can access. Cooper’s system is tracking the results: In six months, 36% of social needs referrals in Cooper’s “Unite” digital hub were housing-related.

Homelessness is becoming an epidemic

More than one in 10 New Jersey residents either do not have stable housing or fear its loss, according to the Rutgers Center for State Health Policy report. Additionally, the group United for ALICE found that in Atlantic County alone, up to 40% of households live on the edge of housing insecurity.

According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, more than half of renter households in the Garden State are cost-burdened, spending more than 30% of their income on rent. The situation is worse for people of color.

In 2023, more than 60% of Atlantic City renters were paying over 30% of their income on rent, exceeding HUD’s benchmark for affordability. Atlantic City has one of the highest foreclosure rates in the country, with 0.62% of all housing units facing a foreclosure filing.

Joel Cantor, director of Rutgers Center for State Health Policy, said that the number of unhoused people has gone up dramatically across the state. Cantor’s research finds that the supply of affordable housing and rents is a leading cause of homelessness in New Jersey.

“We find in our work that people who are unhoused have extraordinarily high rates of utilization of emergency departments and are often there for vague reasons,” Cantor said. “It is a real stressor for health care providers.”

Homelessness nearly doubled in 2025 with the lifting of the COVID-era eviction moratorium. Cantor noted that New Jersey has focused additional resources to support residents, but needs federal help. He’s also concerned that President Donald Trump’s recent executive order punishing homelessness as a crime will make things worse.

“The plan is to direct funding for homeless services to localities that treat homelessness as a crime,” he said. “It takes funds away from evidence-based interventions. So it’s hard to be optimistic that we’re going to be able to address these problems effectively in the coming years.”