Supportive Housing
Permanent housing and long-term support
for people rebuilding their lives after homelessness.
Bethesda Cares helps individuals move into permanent housing and remain stably housed through ongoing case management, home visits, and connections to essential services.
Not a stepping stone.
A destination.
Supportive Housing is a long-term solution that pairs stable, permanent housing with ongoing case management and wraparound support. It is not transitional. It is not temporary. It is a home — with the individualized care needed to stay in it.
For people experiencing chronic homelessness, a roof alone is rarely enough. Supportive Housing addresses the conditions that make sustained stability so difficult: disabling health conditions, behavioral health needs, limited income, and fractured social supports.
Bethesda Cares helps people obtain housing, stay housed, and build stability through consistent, individualized support — for as long as it takes.
Permanent housing paired with case management, care coordination, and wraparound services — provided on the client's timeline, not ours.
housing focused. People do not need to earn their way into housing. A home is the foundation from which everything else — health, employment, community — becomes possible.
Long-term, sustained support. We stay with clients through the difficult, nonlinear work of rebuilding a life.
What makes supportive
housing work?
Helping clients obtain permanent housing quickly through landlord partnerships and a housing focused approach — no preconditions, no waiting to "earn" a home.
Frequent home visits and ongoing support from dedicated case managers who meet clients where they live and stay with them through the slow, nonlinear work of rebuilding stability.
Benefits access, care coordination, and crisis intervention to keep people housed — addressing the health, financial, and social barriers that make sustained stability so difficult.
Housing focused is not just compassionate. It's the smarter investment.
Leaving someone without stable housing doesn't save money — it shifts costs to the most expensive systems we have. The research is clear: permanent supportive housing costs taxpayers less than the alternatives.
People experiencing chronic homelessness use emergency rooms at dramatically higher rates than housed individuals. A single ER visit can cost thousands of dollars — costs borne by hospitals and taxpayers. Stable housing reduces emergency medical visits significantly.
The cost to incarcerate one person for a year far exceeds the cost of supportive housing. Homelessness and incarceration form a revolving cycle — one that permanent housing breaks. Studies consistently show that a housing focused approach reduces involvement with the criminal justice system.
Emergency shelters cost more per person per night than permanent supportive housing — and they don't solve homelessness, they manage it. A housing focused model invests in a permanent solution rather than cycling people through expensive temporary systems indefinitely.
Four programs. One commitment.
Keeping people housed
for the long term.
HIP holds the agency's largest number of housed individuals and has been part of Bethesda Cares' housing interventions since 2017. A county-wide program, HIP is designed to keep formerly homeless clients living with a disabling condition in permanent supportive housing — some for close to 10 years — through regular home visits from our staff.
When a veteran needs housing,
we move immediately.
Bethesda Cares is fully committed to ensuring that all homeless veterans are placed into housing without delay. In 2015, we partnered with Montgomery County on the Zero:2016 campaign — and by the end of that year, our county had achieved a virtual end to veteran homelessness.
Our veterans housing programs include Rapid Rehousing, Permanent Supportive Housing, and Eviction Prevention — allowing us to provide the right intervention for each veteran's specific needs.
Removing barriers.
Building homes.
Corporate Lease offers a unique opportunity for some of the most vulnerable and marginalized individuals in our community to find homes through Agency-leased apartments. Bethesda Cares aims to reduce barriers to housing and find solutions for people to live with dignity in the community.
From unsheltered
to home.
Street to Home is the result of a federal grant awarded to Bethesda Cares in 2024, aimed at ending homelessness for individuals living unsheltered in the community. By the end of 2025, Bethesda Cares had filled all of its vacancies and moved 22 individuals out of homelessness and into their own homes.
Housing is the beginning
of healing.
Our mission is to prevent, ease and end homelessness in our community. Our vision is that we all have the security of housing to live with dignity, purpose, and community connection.
Your support keeps
people housed.
Every donation sustains the case managers, home visits, landlord relationships, and wraparound care that make long-term stability possible for people who have been without a home for years.
Bethesda Cares is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. We have been working to end homelessness in Montgomery County, Maryland since 1988. Supportive Housing is one of five programs we operate.