Hate to say it, but this piece of fiction written by a bureaucrat is pure nonsense. First of all, you need to separate out the mentally ill, who, yes, may well cost gvt thousands of dollars each, per year, but who are a minority in this population and who are treated very differently by local authorities. -- out of sheer necessity. Where there are real costs is in police expenses dealing with crime ; a significant % of the homeless, I will guess in the 20% range, are ex cons and other kinds of criminals like petty thieves. Yet, there are plenty of "homed" crooks, and I'm not sure exactly how to make the comparison in terms of what is costing whom. Increased medical care to society is a major factor but mostly for the long term homeless. Anyone forced to live on the streets for any length of time will inevitably incur medical problems, which in the real world are passed along to hospital ERs. As for shelters, what is the writer drinking ? VERY few cities have shelter programs that are not sick jokes. Most have none at all. What there are, everywhere, are rescue missions of various kinds, mostly supported by private donations on the part of church groups or organizations like Sally --the Salvation Army. Food programs do cost gvt something, but the per year expense is no different that any other low income person or family and is not peculiar to the homeless. Other food is provided by groups like local food banks and Catholic Charities, also privately supported. In a few towns there actually are decent help-the-homeless programs of one kind or another but none that I have ever heard about are comprehensive. One program may help in terms of food and clothing, another might offer a worthwhile job placement service and such things as counseling. And in cases some % of the $$ may come from local gvt, but these kinds of programs are few and far between. Best program I have ever heard of is in Longview, Washington. They had an old hotel that was closing down and the city decided to buy it and convert the bldg into a hotel for the homeless, just small rooms but a decent place to stay. Free meals and a job search service. Cost of entry was a clean police record and willingness to sign up for the job search. Also, residents spent maybe 10 hours weekly in various building maintenance chores, or such things as KP. But far as I know the very worthwhile Longview system only exists in Longview. Bottom line, except for sometimes major medical ER costs, the amount of money spent on the homeless in real dollars per year, almost all cities, is almost nothing and not anything like $ 40,000. And that is precisely why there are hundreds of thousands of homeless, or maybe the low millions. To put some kind of dollar figure on real world homeless people per head, I'd say that most towns pay maybe a few hundred dollars annually, and maybe not even that much. Billy =============================================== 3/12/2012 4:35:51 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time, [email protected] writes:
Fascinating perspective on the economics of homelessness. Surprised I haven't heard more about "supportive housing." E Shaun Donovan: "It costs about $40,000 a year for a homeless person to be on the streets." _http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/mar/12/shaun-donova n/hud-secretary-says-homeless-person-costs-taxpayers/_ (http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/mar/12/shaun-donovan/hud-secretary-says- homeless-person-costs-taxpayers/) ____________________________________ The Truth-O-Meter Says: “It costs about $40,000 a year for a homeless person to be on the streets.” _Shaun Donovan_ (http://www.politifact.com/personalities/shaun-donovan/) on Monday, March 5th, 2012 in an interview on “The Daily Show” HUD secretary says a homeless person costs taxpayers $40,000 a year The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development upped its cool quotient when Secretary Shaun Donovan appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Donovan and Stewart exchanged small talk about growing up in New York City before turning to the topic of homelessness. “The thing we finally figured out is that it’s actually, not only better for people, but cheaper to solve homelessness than it is to put a band-aid on it,” Donovan said in the _March 5, 2012, appearance_ (http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-march-5-2012/shaun-donovan) . “Because, at the end of the day, it costs, between shelters and emergency rooms and jails, it costs about $40,000 a year for a homeless person to be on the streets.” Stewart then mentioned the costs of mental health services for homeless, who suffer a high rate of mental illness. Here, we’re looking at whether Donovan presented an accurate dollar figure. A word on ‘housing first’ By emphasizing the high cost of leaving homeless people on the street, Donovan is reflecting a movement among homeless advocates and governments toward a model called “housing first.” Pioneered in the 1990s in New York City, it puts street dwellers in publicly subsidized rooms of their own and connects them with drug treatment, job placement and psychiatric services with the goal of stabilizing their lives. Unlike many treatment programs, housing-first initiatives don’t require participants to get sober first. “Housing first is a kind of ‘come as you are’ approach. We encourage folks to accept services, and as a result people change their behaviors,” said Brenda Rosen, executive director of Common Ground, a housing-first homelessness program in New York City. The approach succeeds and saves money, advocates say, because it targets the chronically homeless — those who have been homeless for a year or more and commonly suffer from addiction or mental illness. That segment of the homeless population uses expensive public services at very high rates — emergency rooms, police and fire, and courts. 2002 study Donovan’s office pointed to a study by University of Pennsylvania researcher Dennis Culhane titled “_Public Service Reductions Associated with Placement of Homeless Persons with Severe Mental Illness in Supportive Housing_ (http://works.bepress.com/dennis_culhane/4/) .” Culhane analyzed the costs of 4,679 mentally ill homeless people in New York City who were placed in supportive housing that also provided social services. Those costs were compared to data on people who relied on public shelters, public and private hospitals and correctional facilities. Culhane found that “persons placed in supportive housing experience marked reductions in shelter use, hospitalizations, length of stay per hospitalization and time incarcerated. Before placement, homeless people with severe mental illness used about $40,451 per person per year in services (1999 dollars). Placement was associated with a reduction in services use of $16,281 per housing unit per year.” This study is a decade old (the dollar figures are 13 years old), and it examined a subgroup of homeless people — those with severe mental disabilities — who need more services and thus have a higher cost of care. Donovan’s statement didn’t make that distinction; he just said ‘a homeless person.’ What else? Plenty of other studies have attempted to determine the cost of homelessness, although with different variables such as city, age, addiction history, employment history and childhood background. For example, the Economic Roundtable in Los Angeles looked at the costs of homelessness there and reached similar conclusions. The 2009 study “_Where We Sleep: The Costs of Housing and Homelessness in Los Angeles_ (http://www.economicrt.org/summaries/Where_We_Sleep.html) ,” which followed 10,193 homeless individuals, found that the typical public cost for services for residents in supportive housing was $605 a month. For the homeless the cost was $2,897. The rate of $2,897 per month totals about $35,000 a year. “This remarkable finding demonstrates that practical, tangible public benefits result from providing supportive housing for vulnerable homeless individuals,” the researchers wrote. For guidance on this story, we talked to Philip Mangano, the former homelessness policy czar under President George W. Bush. Mangano helped expand housing-first programs — with federal dollars behind them — into cities around the country. As the programs became established, Mangano said he was able to compile data from 65 cities looking at all services affected by homelessness. Hospitals, police and courts top the list. Chronically homeless people are regular visitors to emergency rooms, and each visit results in a hefty bill. They also frequently use mental health and addiction treatment services. They tend to rack up lots of arrests, leading to costly jail stays and use of court time. “They randomly ricochet through very expensive services, Mangano said. Mangano even looked at the impact on libraries, finding that many of them had to hire extra security to handle homeless loiterers. Using data from the 65 cities — of all different sizes and demographics — the cost of keeping people on the street added up to between $35,000 and $150,000 per person per year, Mangano said. Conversely, after the housing-first programs had been established, Mangano said, he looked at the cost of keeping formerly homeless people housed. That range: $13,000 to $25,000 per person per year. “We learned that you could either sustain people in homelessness for $35,000 to $150,000 a year, or you could literally end their homelessness for $13,000 to $25,000 a year,” he said. Why does it work? Rosen said housing people eliminates risk factors related to sleeping on the street, such as exposure to harsh temperatures and unhealthy drug habits that go untreated. Supportive housing, by contrast, provides a healthy environment. “Not only do you have support services on site, we build beautiful buildings and beautiful apartments,” she said. “You bring somebody inside, and you help restore their dignity. The support services that we offer help folks decrease their reliance on drugs. If they have mental health issues, they see a psychiatrist. And oftentimes their behavior is changed.” Our ruling Donovan said it costs the public $40,000 for a homeless person to be on the streets because of the expenses of emergency room visits, jail time and hospital stays. He drew that figure from a 10-year-old study that wasn’t looking at the general homeless population but at people with severe mental illness — a group that uses more services. The study also focused on New York City, an expensive place to live. Though Stewart and Donovan had been talking about growing up in New York shortly before, it wasn’t clear that Donovan was referring only to New York when he noted the costs of homelessness. But based on what we learned about the housing-first approach to ending homelessness, Donovan’s underlying point, as well as the dollar figure he cited, hold up. Mangano told us it costs between $35,000 to $150,000 in public services for one year of someone living on the street. That puts Donovan’s figure at the low end of the range, and it’s an outdated figure that would surely be higher now. All that leads us to a ruling of Mostly True. About this statement: Published: Monday, March 12th, 2012 at 3:59 p.m. Subjects: _Poverty_ (http://www.politifact.com/subjects/poverty/) Sources: _The Daily Show with Jon Stewart_ (http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-march-5-2012/shaun-donovan) , March 5, 2012 _Public Service Reductions Associated with Placement of Homeless Persons with Severe Mental Illness in Supportive Housing_ (http://works.bepress.com/dennis_culhane/4/) , Dennis P. Culhane, 2002 Email interview with Tiffany Thomas Smith, deputy press secretary, _U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development_ (http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD) , March 9, 2012 _Where We Sleep: The Costs of Housing and Homelessness in Los Angeles_ (http://www.economicrt.org/summaries/Where_We_Sleep.html) , Economic Roundtable, November 2009 2007 National Symposium on Homelessness Research, _Studies of the Costs of Homelessness_ (http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/mar/12/shaun-donovan/hud-secretary-says-homeless-person-costs-taxpayers/blank) New York Times, “New Campaign Shows Progress For Homeless,” June 7, 2006, accessed via Nexis Interview with Brenda Rosen, executive director of _Common Ground_ (http://www.commonground.org/) , March 9, 2012 Interview with Philip Mangano, president of the _American Round Table to Abolish Homelessness,_ (http://www.abolitionistroundtable.com/) March 9, 2012 Written by: _Molly Moorhead_ (http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/staff/molly-moorhead/) Researched by: _Molly Moorhead_ (http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/staff/molly-moorhead/) Edited by: _Martha M. Hamilton_ (http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/staff/martha-hamilton/) ____________________________________ (via _Instapaper_ (http://www.instapaper.com/) ) Sent from my iPhone -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: _http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism_ (http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism) Radical Centrism website and blog: _http://RadicalCentrism.org_ (http://radicalcentrism.org/) -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
