The White House’s strategy to address the national mental health crisis, outlined on March 1 in a “fact sheet” and formally announced during President Biden’s March 2 State of the Union speech, includes training HUD Service Coordinators, housing counselors, and Fair Housing grantee staff to be equipped to identify, understand, and respond to signs of mental illness and addiction among those they serve.

HUD will be training such people in these roles to recognize the signs of emotional distress and to connect residents with mental health resources. During a HUD stakeholder call on March 3, White House Senior Policy Advisor Dr. Sejal Hathi & HUD Senior Advisor Dr. Richard Cho told LeadingAge that the training for Service Coordinators would leverage existing evidence-based mental health programming, including “Mental Health First Aid” courses that are built around assessing, listening, reassuring, and encouraging self-help or professional assistance. Administration staff also discussed how HUD is planning to cover the cost of the training without requiring it to be paid out of the Service Coordinator budget.

During the call, senior administration staff also acknowledged the shortfalls of the plan to equip Service Coordinators with mental health training. Much of the HUD-assisted housing portfolio lacks a Service Coordinator position, and those that do exist are already stretched thin. The next step, according to the officials on the call, would be to offer training that other housing staff can access, including property managers and other front line positions.

Other federally-funded social and human services professionals will also be trained in basic mental health skills, including USDA staff who serve farmers and ranchers as well as clinical staff administering the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), and HHS grantees who work directly with children.

Overall, in addition to efforts to support Americans by creating healthy environments through the mental health skills training above, the new mental health strategy includes efforts to address the shortage of behavioral health providers and connecting Americans to care. “Less than half of Americans with mental health conditions receive treatment. The average delay from the onset of mental health symptoms to treatment is 11 years. Too often, costs prevent people from accessing care far. At the same time, those with mental illness are often misunderstood, mistreated, mislabeled, and misdirected to services,” the White House’s fact sheet says.

In LeadingAge’s most recent quarterly survey of our affordable senior housing provider members, completed in December 2021, resident mental health issues came ahead of every other available response, including staffing, funding, inspections, compliance, staffing, vaccine mandates, vacancy issues, fair housing issues, and disaster preparedness, when providers were asked, “What do you anticipate as the top operational challenge in the next three months?” LeadingAge looks forward to working with HUD and others on bringing more mental health resources to aging services providers.

LeadingAge also strongly supports expanding the number of Service Coordinators in federally-subsidized housing, including in HUD-assisted senior housing. 

Read the White House’s “fact sheet” here.