Silicon Valley Discovers the Cheapest Way to Help the Homeless: Give Them Homes [View all]

[KamaAina]

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/05/santa-clara-silicon-valley-homelessness

Santa Clara County is perhaps best known as the home of Silicon Valley. It also has one of the country's highest rates of homelessness and its third largest chronically homeless population.

An extensive new study of the county's homelessness crisis, published yesterday, finds that the most cost-effective way to address the problem is to provide people with homes. Those findings echo a similar approach that's been successfully adopted in Utah, the subject of Mother Jones' April/May cover story....

They found that much of the public costs of homelessness stemmed from a small segment of this population who were persistently homeless, around 2,800 people. Close to half of all county expenditures were spent on just five percent of the homeless population, who came into frequent contact with police, hospitals, and other service agencies, racking up an average of $100,000 in costs per person annually. Those costs quickly add up—overall, Santa Clara communities spend $520 million in homeless services every year.

The study also highlights solutions. The researchers examined Destination: Home's program, which has housed more than 800 people in the past five years. The study looked at more than 400 of these housing recipients, a fifth of whom were part of the most expensive cohort. Before receiving housing, they each averaged nearly $62,500 in public costs annually. Housing them cost less than $20,000 per person—an annual savings of more than $42,000.