A Proper Home

A stiff breeze blows at your back as you make the most of a turkey sandwich that you found in a dumpster. The cool winter air nips at your nose and eyes, but it’s something you’ve grown used to. Tonight, you have gathered a sleeping bag and your secondhand winter gear to keep you warm from the elements – the shelters were all full. As far as family goes, you have none and no friends in this town that you’re in right now. You don’t have a leg to stand on.

It’s getting progressively colder and hunger starts to wear on you. Do you go to the emergency room for a warm bed? How about stealing a bag of potato chips from the 24-hour convenience store on the corner? These both seem like viable options for anyone in your difficult situation. You choose to do neither and try to catch some sleep underneath a bridge, but it doesn’t come easy. By the time morning rolls around, you’ve only managed to attain about three hours of sleep and the hunger pangs are starting to get to you. You desperately want to get away from it all, but you have no choice. This is your life and it has been for as long as you can remember. You are chronically homeless.

A census compiled by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) found that on a typical night in 2013, there were about 109,000 chronically homeless people across our country. To be chronically homeless, a person must experience a year or more of consistent homelessness or four or more periods of homelessness in the past three years. These individuals cannot dig themselves out of their situations and often remain homeless for the majority of their adult lives. That is, unless they live in Utah.

You’re still out living on the streets and scraping to get by. Salt Lake City, Utah, is the city you call home, but it just so happens that you have no physical home. An older gentleman in a grey sport coat approaches you and asks if you need a place to call your own. Your first instinct is that this man must be some sort of religious nut, but he assures you that he’s not. He’s with a program known as Housing First, whose primary objective is to house the chronically homeless – no strings attached. You’re intrigued, but skeptical. That being said, you’re just desperate enough to listen to the man, who tells you that he could have you in a house of your very own free of charge in just six months. Fast forward six months and you’re sitting in your new pad going through paperwork to find a job. Life is looking up and you have the gentleman in the grey sport coat to thank for it.

In Utah, Housing First, a program become initiative that has been adopted by state legislators, is systematically wiping out chronic homelessness across the state. How do they do it? The answer is simple: they give the homeless homes. There has been a 72 percent decrease in chronic homelessness statewide since 2005 and the numbers continue to drop.

The first thing that comes to mind is how this solution could possibly be cost-effective. As it turns out, maintaining a homeless person on the street costs a great deal of taxpayer money that could be used more effectively by just housing that person. The expenses in maintaining the homeless population include money spent on emergency room visits, incarceration expenses, shelter costs and various other public services that are more often utilized by the homeless population.

To put things in perspective, the average homeless individual will visit an emergency room five times per year. These individuals generally don’t have primary care providers and are at much higher risk of contracting diseases as a result of unsanitary living conditions, using prostitution to survive and living in close proximity to diseased individuals. They may also just want a warm bed to sleep in when the shelters are full. Whatever the case may be, each one of those visits costs around $3,700. That’s a total of $18,500 of taxpayer dollars spent on each homeless person per year for ER visits alone. Studies have shown that along with improving living conditions, housing the homeless population can cut down on emergency room visits by up to 61 percent.

It’s not just the emergency room that’s racking up the bill for homelessness. Jails are constantly filled with homeless inmates and can be costly. The cost to maintain an inmate for one year in a state or federal penitentiary costs taxpayers around $20,000 and the same cost for overnight jail is about $14,000. Because laws against public camping, loitering and petty theft target homeless individuals, they are more likely to end up in jail as a result. A Housing First program in Charlotte, North Carolina, served 85 homeless adults and, over two years, found that these individuals experienced a 78 percent decrease in arrests. Housing these people is a surefire way to get them out of our jails and into the homes where they belong.

A common question that arises in this debate is how cost effective providing homes to homeless individuals actually is. In the case of our Utah example, it costs about $20,000 per year to maintain a homeless person living on the street and just $8,000 per year to provide them with free housing. That means $12,000 in taxpayer money can be utilized for something other than simply maintaining the homeless population. In Colorado, the cost of maintaining a homeless person on the street for a year costs $26,000 more than housing them for that same year. Not only do we as taxpayers save money from housing the homeless, but the homeless individuals can actually start making contributions to society as well.

Colorado State University psychology lab manager, Nedra Hauck, cites filling the need of shelter as a stepping-stone to leading a more fulfilling life.

“According to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, shelter is the second basic need after the physiological needs of food, water and air,” Hauck said. “Before filling the need of shelter, individuals are incapable of focusing on much more than the immediate need of a place to sleep and feel safe. That being said, after they find shelter, the next needs are love and belonging as well as esteem.”

Within the need for esteem is respect for others, respect by others and achievement. In housing the homeless, individuals would be able to seek love and belonging in the newly stable environment in which they live and, ultimately, they would seek the need for esteem. This need is most often fulfilled by a desire to work and contribute to society. Basically, if the homeless are housed, they will be one step closer to becoming functioning and contributing members of society. However, there are naysayers out there who argue that the homeless population is beyond salvation due to their rampant substance abuse issues and mental health problems.

It’s true that homeless individuals suffer exponentially more from substance abuse and mental health issues than the general population at large. It’s also true, however, that they have the least access to treatment options and psychiatric assistance. If the homeless were given homes, more money could be used to examine and mend the underlying issues of homelessness. This money could be used for substance abuse counseling, therapy and education for at-risk populations including the homeless. It could also be utilized in the form of psychiatric assistance, but studies have shown that simply having a home puts an individual at lower risk of developing a mental illness. A cost study out of Portland, Maine, found that there was a 57 percent reduction in the cost of mental health services over a six-month period for homeless individuals who were given a home. It seems as though just having a home can alleviate some of the mental health issues that plague the homeless population. This argument still hasn’t stopped some of the parties against housing the homeless.

University of Kansas graduate student in public policy, Jackson Brockway, voiced his opinion regarding some possible issues that this idea may face.

“I think that giving homes to the homeless is a great idea,” Brockway said, “but there are some obvious challenges that lie ahead. The first one that strikes my mind is how similar these housing options sound to the notorious project housing ‘solutions’ in New York, Chicago and St. Louis in the 1950’s. Giving people homes doesn’t necessarily mean that they will get out of poverty and, in some circumstances, it may actually create areas of extreme poverty that are just as difficult to escape.”

While this is a well thought out argument, it’s clear in the case of Utah that housing the homeless does work if combined with other resources. Each homeless person that is housed receives a caseworker and the housing that they are placed into has a resource center that is open during regular business hours. The resource center offers everything from job-hunting assistance to psychiatric care and everything in between. This helps the individuals know where to start on their quest toward becoming a functioning member of society.

On top of all of this, there are housing options across the country that are integrating the homeless community with low and middle income individuals as well. Skid Row Housing Trust in Los Angeles, California, recently opened an apartment complex known as Star Apartments that offers free housing to the chronically homeless as well as low-income and market rate units. On top of this, it offers a wellness center, counselors, a medical clinic, a running track, an art studio and various other amenities to help individuals get back on their feet. The projects didn’t have any support other than a physical roof and walls, while the care that comes along with programs like Housing First and the Star Apartments are what really help homeless individuals enter back into society.

You’re back in your free apartment that was given to you by the Housing First program in Salt Lake City. You have spent about two months there and are finally sober after tirelessly working with your caseworker day and night. In your spare time, you’ve managed to acquire a job at the grocery store down the street about two weeks ago and you received your first paycheck yesterday. With that money, you were able to buy food, a few books and a cellphone plan while having a little left over to start a savings account with. The rest of your life is ahead of you and suddenly, that doesn’t seem like such a bad thing. And to think that it all started with a home.

Sidebar:

Homelessness in the United States: The Numbers

  • The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development estimates there are 610,000 homeless people in the U.S. (2013).
  • Of those, 109,000 qualify as chronically homeless (2013).
  • There are 50,000 homeless veterans currently living in the U.S. (2013).
  • Homeless people visit the emergency room an average of five times per year at an average cost of $3,700 per visit.
  • 80 percent of homeless visits to the ER could have been treated with basic preventative care.
  • One homeless shelter in Worcester, Massachusetts, costs $157,000 to run for one year.
  • Maintaining a homeless person in prison costs $20,000 per year.
  • Maintaining a homeless person in overnight jail costs $14,000 per year.
  • In Utah, maintaining a homeless person on the street costs $20,000 per year.
  • In Utah, housing a homeless person costs $8,000 per year.
  • A study in Los Angeles, California, found that placing four chronically homeless people in homes for a year saved the city $80,000.

Sources:

http://mic.com/articles/108720/utah-s-radical-solution-to-fighting-homelessness-has-been-a-remarkable-success

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