When housing professionals gather for the Housing California Conference March 18–21, the conversation will inevitably return to a familiar question: how do we expand access in a system where demand consistently outpaces supply?
For decades, Section 8 has been the backbone of affordable housing access. Yet across California, voucher waitlists stretch for years. For individuals exiting incarceration, leaving hospitals, or navigating chronic homelessness, that timeline rarely matches the urgency of their situation.
On Friday, during the conference’s Solve Homelessness Track, a multidisciplinary team from Mysti’s Adult & Family Services will lead a workshop titled “Unlocking Every Door: Community-Based Housing Strategies Beyond Section 8.”
The session reflects a broader shift happening across the state. As California advances CalAIM — its sweeping Medi-Cal reform initiative — housing has become formally embedded within healthcare strategy. Through Enhanced Care Management (ECM) and Community Supports, managed care plans are now funding housing navigation, security deposits, recuperative care coordination, and stabilization services for high-risk members.
That policy evolution has created both opportunity and complexity.
Housing as Healthcare Infrastructure
The workshop panel brings together practitioners who operate at the intersection of housing systems, trauma response, managed care compliance, and justice-involved reentry.
Giovanne Schachere, CEO of Mysti’s Adult & Family Services, will moderate the session alongside Dr. Jason D. Green, EdD, a triage and trauma specialist whose work focuses on stabilizing individuals with layered vulnerabilities. Joining them are Anayancy Rosillo-Contreras, Director of Programs & Services; Ruqayyah Muhammad, Partnerships Liason, Meaghan Highwood, Director of Case Management; and Paul Hall, Assistant Director.
While Mysti’s operates in California within Central California Alliance for Health and Contra Costa Health Plan territories, members of the leadership team also bring Washington State Medicaid experience — offering perspective on how different states are integrating housing into public health frameworks.
The collective expertise underscores a reality increasingly acknowledged across the sector: housing stabilization now requires both field-based flexibility and administrative precision.
Beyond the Voucher Pipeline
Section 8 remains essential. But providers across the state are confronting its structural limitations. Even when vouchers are available, landlord participation varies widely. Justice-involved individuals face additional screening barriers. Credit histories, prior evictions, and untreated trauma complicate placement.
“Unlocking Every Door” explores what community-based organizations can do when traditional pathways stall.
The discussion will examine master leasing arrangements, landlord engagement strategies, Medi-Cal-funded housing deposits, justice-involved stabilization models, and trauma-informed approaches that address retention as much as placement.
Dr. Green’s triage framework emphasizes that housing placement without stabilization planning often leads to repeat displacement. Meanwhile, Rosillo-Contreras and Muhammad bring implementation experience navigating managed care documentation requirements, county coordination, and frontline problem-solving.
Highwood and Hall contribute insight from Washington’s Medicaid-aligned housing efforts, highlighting how cross-state learning is shaping more integrated models.
Execution in a Converging System
Housing California Conference has increasingly become a space where healthcare administrators, housing developers, and community-based organizations share responsibility for solving homelessness.
CalAIM’s Community Supports program formalized housing as a health intervention. But integration requires more than funding. It requires coordination between managed care plans, probation departments, hospitals, landlords, and case managers — all operating within different regulatory environments.
The Friday workshop does not position Section 8 as obsolete. Instead, it asks a more pragmatic question: what additional tools must communities deploy to meet immediate need?
As California continues investing in housing-first strategies and Medicaid reform, the emphasis is shifting from policy design to operational capacity. Who can navigate the paperwork? Who can engage landlords? Who can stabilize a placement when complications arise?
For conference attendees, the answers may lie not in a single program but in a networked approach — one that treats housing access as both a structural issue and a hands-on discipline.
In that context, “Unlocking Every Door” becomes less a slogan than a working philosophy: expand pathways, reduce bottlenecks, and treat housing not as a limited resource to ration, but as a system to redesign.
