Standing in his new apartment, on the top of a two-level building in Oakland, Daniel Yapo admits his journey from homelessness to housing took a lot of help.

Yapo spent years bouncing between temporary homes and jail, even spending time living on a roof in nearby Hayward. Service providers helped him find a place of his own, navigate treatment for mental illness and handle the tasks that come with independent living.

"Whatever problem I had, whether it be courts, or my license, or anything that I had a problem with, they assigned somebody to help me with that," Yapo said. "They just keep on helping me!"

'We really think that housing is health care.' Maria X. Martinez, Whole Person Care

A new program launching around the state this summer aims to help more Medi-Cal recipients like Yapo by using federal health dollars to pay for supportive housing services.

The Whole Person Care program represents a breakthrough in using health care money for housing services, which the federal government had long been wary of doing. The five-year pilot program allows local governments to pay for support services, but not actual rental costs, through a matching grant from Medicaid.