Table 1.

Emergent Themes and Illustrative Quotes

Theme	Quote
Health Care Becomes ‘Relevant’ With Housing	“Like he said, it goes back to priorities. When you're in the streets, it's survival. My back does hurt. My vision's not well. But, right now, they're feeding that 4 o'clock [referring to a food line at a local church]. With my apartment instead of surviving, you get to living. You start prioritizing. I wanna eat, but instead of me buying a pack of cookies, why don't I buy something nutritious. You literally, we got handed like a second chance in life to get back to what god wanted us to do.” “I have a place now. I can go home. I have my dresser and 14 vials on there. There's no way I would've walked around the street with my medicine.” “I was sick when I was in the streets. You gave me a key, I'm still sick, but I'm in a better position to do something about it. The healing process begins every time you put that key in the door.” “I knew that that wasn't a place that I wanted to be, but I tried to be like, ‘It's what I have to do now.’ The ‘so what’ attitude. Or, I'm gonna just survive. So, that was good health to me as far as I was concerned.” “You get in that bed, you start pursuing those things because it's relevant.”
Internal and External Factors Constrain Healthier Living	“Even though I know to get up and keep doing something but, I don't want to. And plus, I'm a little older now, and I just, just ready to ride out. I ain't super excited or nothing, but I just wanna just ride out. I'm tired. I don't like, been through too much stuff, just tired. That's it.” “After being diagnosed with the depression, I um, I slumped, it seems like, into another, I don't know, I don't know, some sort of, another world it seems like. You know, it's like I can just sit there and things go on, and I'm gonna do things. It's like a procrastination world, you know. I just procrastinate and nothing happens but time goes by.” “You think that when you get a place everything was gonna fall in place. And, it doesn't work that way...Before, there were small hoops to jump through, but now you got more. You gotta get insurance, because now you have a mailing address. You got the phone... It does get a little easier, but it's still the same stuff.” “I got the A, B, D, whatever the letters are [referring to Medicare]. And, I found out, I couldn't get a decent pair of eye glasses. So, I had to switch insurance, drop that, pick up this other insurance, get the eye glasses I need, drop that insurance, go back to my insurance.” “I believe that now, ‘Oh, I excelled. I got better health now.’ Only for me to start physically on focusing in on all the physical. ‘My back hurts, my leg, I gotta get my knee done. I gotta get my foot operated on. I gotta get my neck done. I gotta get this ear removed.’ And, I had this shit for years—20-30 years. But, all of a sudden now the physical became more important.” “I'm in pain and sick almost everyday. Good health doesn't even reach me.” “You gotta search and look and get a referral and get somebody else to sign on it. It's like, ‘damn.’” “With the trying to get to healthy, when you're doing it the right way and aren't in the streets. It's a long process.”
Importance of Meeting Basic Needs	“You have a life, but it takes a little a little bit more to live life. And I thank God that I really feel like I'm living life today [with housing].” “Our health has gotten better because we have a place to go, to keep our meds. I make my appointments, I take my meds, I eat better because I have my own food.”
A Process of Participation and Activation	“We was treated like human beings. And not like numbers, like on a case study or something. They talked to us like we were human and it made you feel good to be able to express yourself. And then the people that was in the group, most of them I was out on the street with so it made it easier to be able to talk. I saw, all of us know what we went through out there so it was easy to express yourself.” “It started, like I say, it started making me go to the doctor more and find out the things that's wrong with me and if I had a situation, then I learned that I could go back and follow up on it. You told me something while I was out on the street, I didn't follow up on nothing I just chased right to the bottle. Now I know that I have to follow up on things in order to get better.”
Tools for Healthier Living Can Be Developed	“In the beginning it kinda felt like a classroom. It felt like they're just gonna teach us, you know, until I think a lot of us just finally realized that, you know, we need to participate in this and tell them what we're going through because they have, I don't know the skills, but they have the knowledge of things that you can do.” “Um, I learned how to eat better. Now I know I have to eat my three meals a day. I have (to) nourish the body in order to maintain it...Then also in the book, booklet that they gave us, the manual on certain foods that are not as fatty. We had a big debate over which type of bread we should or could be eating.” “They'd give me tips on, trying to get to sleep earlier. Uh, then I remember one was my walking regiment and uh, it was suggested that if I walk the same length at the same time every day, at the same pace, that (I'm) not actually working the muscles. So I have to challenge my muscles.” “This program really teaches that you can do it yourself, just need the knowledge; and they showed me, yea, you're right, I can do it. Don't be afraid to talk to your doctor, um. I used to be shy about talking to my doctor. Let them do the talking. I figured they know it all. No, not necessarily, I have an agenda. I'm gonna see her Tuesday, I'm gonna have to ask her a few questions. I have a list of questions that I have to ask her.” “You get out of it what you put in.” “Again, the sharing is extremely important, that you're not an island alone. You don't have to suffer in pain alone.” “Uh, we all come in with the same common denominator. We all have pain. We all have some malady that we're gonna share a story about.”