The High Cost of Homelessness

I just got back from a day conference at the "new" UMass Lowell Inn & Conference Center.  This was one of a series titled "Keys to Ending Homelessness."

This particular conference was the first of the series and dealt with Social Security Disability Benefits.  Very interesting and a lot of good information.

The lunch speaker was Dr Jim O'Connell, from Boston Healthcare for the Homeless, and his talk was very informative.

One of the pieces of information I picked up was that there was a Federal study from 1999 to 2003 of 119 people living on the street.  Within that group, they managed over 18,300 visits to the Emergency Room in those five years.  That is a lot of visits.  The average is over two per person per month.

Someone once told me that an emergency room visit costs about $1,000.  That would make it about $18,300,000 total cost.  That is a lot of money.

Going to another source, Joe Finn, of Massachusetts Housing and Shelter Alliance (pronounced Ma has ah), when, during an experiment a group of street people were moved into housing, their medical costs fell to half.

So, putting Dr Jim O'Connell's numbers with the cost of visits and the hope of cutting costs, providing housing to those 119 street people might have cut the number of visits in half. If the cost of a room for each of the 119 people was $1,000 a month, then we might have save $2,000,000 over five years.  Sure, that is only $400,000 per year, but I bet that would have hired a couple of teachers or a couple of policemen.

Fixing the homeless problem is not just about our moral duty to our fellow man.  It is also good dollars and sense.

Regards  —  Cliff