“We had a guest last summer who was experiencing some really significant pulmonary issues — her breathing in particular.”
Jenissee Volpintesta, the supportive services director at the Cathedral Center homeless shelter, recounts a time when an elderly woman experiencing homelessness was gasping for air and struggling to breathe.
“It was clear she had a really hard life and hasn't had stability for a very long time,” Volpintesta said. “The life expectancy of someone who's experiencing homelessness, particularly being outdoors, is less than someone who hasn't had that same exposure.”
Volpintesta said they didn’t know the health issues of this woman because she had been in the shelter for only two days. She said they could only tell she was tired.
“It was really an emergency response not knowing her [health situation],” Volpintesta said. “We placed the 911 call because she was looking so poor, and while she was being assessed by the emergency team, she had tears in her eyes. She thanked us for caring about her.”
This woman ended up in the hospital for two weeks and was eventually released. Although her story didn’t have a deadly ending, it could have if her health condition had been more serious, or the ambulance had a slower response.
This type of story happens every day in homeless shelters throughout southeastern Wisconsin.
Records from the Milwaukee Fire Department open data portal show that since Feb. 20, 2024, there have been 404 calls for emergency medical services (EMS) put out by the nine Milwaukee-based homeless shelters that provide overnight housing.
According to sources working in homeless shelters in Milwaukee, Racine and Madison that we interviewed, this is a multifaceted issue. It’s caused by a lack of access to quality health care, missing medical records and documentation, outdoor environments that those experiencing homelessness must endure and an absence of necessities that would proactively ease the situation.
“It’s easy to think it’s not your problem if you don’t have to face it every day,” Carly Sobye, a manager at The Beacon homeless shelter in Madison, said. “But homelessness is a symptom that has other broader issues like health care access, mental health support and economic inequality.”
An incomplete picture of a constant problem
Since Feb. 20 of last year, open records from the Milwaukee Fire Department data portal show that the Cathedral Center, which provides temporary shelter for up 32 women and 16 families, has made 24 calls for service to EMS.
While talking to Volpintesta and the Development and Communications Manager at the Cathedral Center, Evan Barbian, they said that they put in multiple calls for service every month. More than what the data portal would indicate.
They explained the discrepancy is present because the Cathedral Center sometimes makes calls directly to Bell Ambulance, which according to a Milwaukee Fire Records Specialist, isn’t counted towards the data portal’s total.
Barbian said that making these private calls to Bell Ambulance directly is a common practice among homeless shelters in Milwaukee.
“It’s typically used for non-life-threatening medical situations where staff determine that ambulance transport is appropriate but immediate emergency response via 911 is not necessary,” Barbian said. “This system helps us ensure that guests receive the appropriate care while also being thoughtful about the use of emergency resources.”
With this information, the reported number of EMS calls put out by homeless shelters in Milwaukee is likely underrepresented by data portal numbers.
Sobye said that the reason for the high number of calls for service that Wisconsin homeless shelters put out comes from the long distances a person experiencing homelessness must travel to access health care resources and clinics.
“It’s extremely difficult,” Sobye said. “Many shelters and resources are spread out across the city, and public transportation can be unreliable or inaccessible for someone carrying all their belongings, managing an injury or suffering with mental health.”
In-house help
Ben Bradley, a strategy lead for Community Solutions, a homelessness advocacy organization that works in over 100 cities and counties across the country, said that most of these calls for service could be aided by the help of an on-site emergency medical technician (EMT).
Neither the Milwaukee Rescue Mission nor the Cathedral Center has an EMT on site to assist with health issues, injury or harm to its residents because of lack of funding. If they did, Bradley said it could eliminate the need for calls for service and provide quicker response times.
Identifying the source of the issue
Bradley has assisted homeless shelters across the country in finding health care connections and reported on the issue in detail. He said that people experiencing homelessness deal with these health problems in the first place because they wrestle with a combination of their poor living environment and lack of health care access.
“I think that [their health situations] compound with the conditions that individuals are living in and it can create some of these coexisting conditions that make really tough situations for any kind of recovery,” Bradley said. “With hospitals or emergency rooms, there's a good chance that whatever they went in for is not fully healed or repaired, and so everything snowballs from there.”
Volpintesta said that the top priority for the Cathedral Center is not reducing the number of calls for service but providing access to sufficient health care — because that will bring the number of calls for service down naturally.
She also said the reason for most of these calls for service — along with inadequate health care at the building — is hospitals letting out patients too soon who are coming to the homeless shelters.
“It's unfortunate,” Volpintesta said. “There are times where we have new guests coming in, and some of them are released from the hospital a little bit sooner than what should have been. Maybe they needed longer-term care, or they could have been referred elsewhere. We turn around and end up having to call the ambulance.”
Similar to the Cathedral Center, The Milwaukee Rescue Mission, a homeless shelter located near Marquette University’s campus, provides overnight housing. Though, it’s different because it is one of the most populated homeless shelters in Milwaukee, having served 185 individuals daily in 2024. Open records from the city of Milwaukee Fire Department show from Jan. 1, 2024, to Feb. 26, 2025, the shelter and its occupants put out 218 calls for service to police and emergency medical services.
The same open records also show that over half the calls from the Rescue Mission during the period were for emergency medical services and the others were mostly for emotionally distressed people or welfare reasons.
“Shelters are typically staffed by folks that have social work or humanitarian backgrounds, and not medical backgrounds,” said Bradley. “When an open wound occurs, they theoretically could fix it, but also, that's not their expertise. So, there's an inclination to call in the experts wherever possible.”
Bradley said that an important statistic to look at to know the severity of these calls would be the hospitalization rates. When we requested them from a Milwaukee Fire Records Specialist, he couldn’t provide us with the hospitalization rates. He said the city doesn’t track them because there are multiple different private ambulance services in Milwaukee.
A disconnect from care
If the medical situation that a resident in a homeless shelter is facing isn’t urgent, such as a cold or a chronic illness which doesn’t require a call for service, Volpintesta said the people at the homeless shelter can’t easily access a clinic.
On average, the medical clinics listed as being free and low-cost on the Milwaukee Health Department’s website are about four miles away from the Milwaukee Rescue Mission and about three-and-a-half miles away from the Cathedral Center.
Andi Broffman, Bradley’s coworker and a strategy lead at Community Solutions, says that most people experiencing homelessness do not have a connection to a primary health provider because they may have had bad experiences with them in the past. This makes it even more difficult for people experiencing homelessness to gain access to health care.
“Connection to primary care is so important,” Broffman said. “Yet, a lot of people experiencing homelessness may not have a primary care doctor. They may have experienced real trauma in the health system that makes them reticent to engage.”
A problem that stretches to Madison
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development says that Milwaukee’s homeless population has decreased almost 60% since 2015 — 1,521 to 885. This can be partially attributed a 2024 effort in which Milwaukee authorities cleared out city parking lots and encampments of people living in cars or tents.
Opposingly, Madison’s homeless population has increased 27% since 2019 — 578 to 736.
The Capital Times, a Madison-based newspaper and website, says the increase in the homeless population has led to overcrowding of Madison shelters.
The Beacon is one of the homeless shelters welcoming that Madison population. The Beacon partners with over 27 agencies to provide support under one roof while offering a range of essential services to provide immediate relief and long-term stability. In 2024, The Beacon served an average of 243 guests daily — providing around 52,000 lunches, 7,000 showers and 8,000 loads of laundry during the year.
Sobye, The Beacon’s manager of homeless services, said that the rising homelessness in Madison is heartbreaking and the general rising population only perpetuates that.
“Madison is a city that’s growing quickly,” Sobye said. “With that growth comes rising rent prices, shortage of affordable housing and increased struggles for individuals, families, veterans and those who are struggling with mental health or addiction.”
At The Beacon, Sobye said there are regular calls for service and in many cases, most of them are dependent on the seasons as well as the needs of the individuals they serve.
“We do unfortunately, have to call ambulances fairly regularly,” Sobye said. “Sometimes multiple times a week.
“We call when someone is experiencing a medical emergency, like a seizure, overdose, mental health crisis, or severe dehydration or frostbite. Our staff is trained to recognize when someone’s health is at risk and because of this, we act quickly.”
Sobye also noted that the COVID-19 pandemic worsened the situation, and although there is now greater awareness around homeless shelter occupant sicknesses, she said the shelter still doesn’t have enough resources to keep up.
“In extreme weather, even a short trip becomes very risky,” Sobye said. “That’s why places like us try to centralize services as much as possible but I would state it is still not enough.”
Racine: a smaller city with the same issue
Another city in Wisconsin that is having a similar issue, despite the total population being seven times less than Milwaukee, is Racine. HALO, Inc. is the only homeless shelter in the city that provides overnight housing and Racine County Fire Department open records show that the shelter has put out 194 calls for service since Jan. 1, 2024.
The Shelter Operations Director for HALO, Bob Sus, said that the process of making a call for service in the homeless shelter can be scary when one of the people experiencing homelessness at the shelter makes the call instead of one of the staff members.
“There's always a slight sense of panic and stress if the staff weren't aware that somebody called for themselves,” Sus said. “Suddenly we’re bopping through the shelter trying to make sure that everybody's still breathing.”
Unlike Milwaukee and Madison, Racine keeps track of hospitalization rates following calls for service. Of the almost 200 calls for service from HALO, open records from Racine County Fire Department showed 121 of them — 62 percent — resulted in the patient being transported to a hospital.
On top of that, Sus said there’s complications after they go to a hospital. He said that questions pop into his head such as; did they have all their things? If they’re being taken overnight, did they get their cellphone or medication? Are they going to come back? How will that affect how many meals we need to make for the evening?
These questions wouldn’t have presented themselves if the person experiencing homelessness had access to primary care. Though, similarly to Milwaukee and Madison, the nearest low-cost health clinics from HALO are on average about 2.3 miles away and Sus said that not many of the people experiencing homelessness at the shelter can get there if they’re already sick or hurt.
A push to pair the homeless with health care
There has been an effort across the country throughout the various homeless shelters that Broffman has worked with to pair shelters with a medical clinic or provider.
“There's been a lot of traction in working with health care systems and managed care organizations to A, connect people to insurance and then B, connect them up to a primary care provider or a regular behavioral health service provider,” Broffman said.
HALO had been working with Lakeview Health Clinic since April 2023 and in Jan. 2024, they dedicated an office inside of their shelter to people from the clinic doing routine checkups on the homeless shelter residents. Though, because the clinic itself closed in Jan. 2025, the only healthcare access that HALO can provide to its residents are visits from nurses in the nursing program at UW-Parkside once or twice a year.
Without additional funding, Sus said that this is the most HALO can do.
A shelter that has found more success in connecting the homeless population to medical care is People Serving People, a Minneapolis-based organization. It provides its residents with medical care through a partnership with Hennepin County. They have a medical clinic on-site that is free of charge to not only the population that People Serving People take care of, but any person experiencing homelessness in the area.
“We sought the partnership knowing that we then could be a hub for all homeless families in the county,” said Hoang Murphy, the CEO of People Serving People. “If you're homeless and you need clinic support, you can come to our shelter. Even if you're not staying at the shelter, you can still go there to get medical help.”
The doctors and caretakers on site aren’t traditionally trained medical professionals either. They’re trained specifically in treating the population that People Serving People would host.
“The providers in our clinic are here to work with folks who have experienced homelessness,” Murphy said. “[Our providers] know that there are specific needs that [homeless people] are coming in with and they're not having to adjust to the traumas that families have experienced from being in the street or being homeless.”
The problem affects everyone
The issue of people experiencing homelessness not having sufficient access to health care is rampant across Wisconsin and has implications for residents throughout the state that don’t deal with homelessness.
Volpintesta used an example of children in grade school to heighten this point. She said that if a child of a person experiencing homelessness, who doesn’t have access to basic needs and shelter, works with a fellow student that receives a good night’s sleep, healthy meals and clean clothes, the behavior of the child who has their needs unmet will have a direct effect on the one who does.
“If we have a healthier society, it will create that health parity across the board,” Volpintesta said.
Additionally, Volpintesta said that there is an economic aspect of the problem. She said if more people are contributing to a community, that increases the tax base, which in turn increases access to resources, basic needs and public services. If these people in the homeless shelter started to be given access to health care, they would strengthen the economy and be physically capable of earning a wage that would begin to get them out of homelessness.
Though, Sobye said that it also boils down to caring for your fellow humans.
“Homelessness is about humanity,” said Sobye, who has been in her position at The Beacon for almost three years now. “You never know when it could be you, your child, your neighbor.
“Caring about others builds a safer, more compassionate community for everyone.”
This article was proofread for spelling, grammar and AP Style by Open AI’s ChatGPT.
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