A Community Solution
Too many men, women, and children experience homelessness in the United States:
- At least a half a million Americans do not have a place to call home each night.
- As many as one percent of all Americans find themselves homeless at some point each year.
- As many as 250,000 American households—including at least 12,000 to 15,000 families with children—have nowhere to call home for years on end.
- Ten percent of those who become homeless every year are people who are homeless for the long term; they use 50 percent of shelter capacity. For chronically homeless people—who measure their homelessness in years, instead of weeks or months—mental illness, substance addiction, and physical disabilities often create additional barriers to stability and a new life off of the streets.
Ending Homelessness
Since the early 1980s, dedicated nonprofits across the country have demonstrated that supportive housing—affordable housing linked to accessible mental health, substance addiction, employment and other support services—provides the support that these individuals and families need to succeed on their own. By providing chronically homeless people with a way out of expensive emergency public services and back into their own homes and communities, supportive housing not only improves the lives of its residents but also generates significant public savings.
For too long, homelessness has troubled America’s conscience, harmed its most vulnerable people, and cost the public hundreds of millions of dollars for band-aid, emergency solutions that have had limited and inadequate results.
But in the midst of this enduring tragedy, there is hope. We now know that supportive housing ends homelessness for people with chronic barriers to health and housing stability. Now is the time to take this approach to scale and end homelessness for those who inhabit our streets, parks, and emergency shelters for years on end.
A growing number of communities around the country agree, and they now seek to stop managing homelessness and embrace long-term solutions. An essential feature of their plans is the creation of hundreds of thousands of supportive housing units, with a high priority on housing those who have been homeless for the longest periods of time.
No one wants to be homeless.
Supportive housing offers people a way out of a situation that no one wants to be in: having no stable place to live. In supportive housing, people can live with stability, autonomy, and dignity.
Supportive housing helps people live more stable and productive lives.
Supportive housing is proven to help people who are persistently homeless find stability in a home of their own. Supportive housing’s combination of permanent, affordable housing and available services works well for people who face the most complex challenges— people who are not only homeless, but who also have very low incomes and serious, persistent issues that may include substance use, mental illness, and HIV/AIDS.
How Do Communities Benefit?
The most comprehensive case for supportive housing is made by a recently released study from the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Mental Health Policy and Services Research. Researchers tracked the costs associated with nearly 5,000 mentally ill people in New York City for two years while they were homeless and for two years after they were housed. Among their conclusions: supportive and transitional housing created an average annual savings of $16,282 per person by reducing the use of public services.
- 72% of savings resulted from a decline in the use of public health services;
- 23% from a decline in shelter use; and
- 5% from reduced incarceration of homeless people with mental illness.
This reduction in hospitalizations, incarcerations, and shelter costs nearly covered the cost of developing, operating, and providing services in upportive housing. After deducting the public benefits, the average supportive housing unit created by a city-state partnership in New York City cost only $995 per year.
In other words, based on the most conservative assumptions—without taking into account the positive impacts on health status and employment status, or improvements to neighborhoods and communities—it costs little more to permanently house and support people than it does to leave them homeless.
And further evidence shows that supportive housing provides public benefits beyond these savings. An analysis of the Connecticut Supportive Housing Demonstration Program found that supportive housing improved neighborhood safety and beautification, increasing or stabilizing property values in most communities.
Years of experience confirm that neighbors embrace supportive housing as an asset to their communities. Supportive housing projects and their sponsors are often among the “pioneers” in a neighborhood’s renaissance. The Times Square, a supportive housing project in New York that was featured in two 60 Minutes stories, is a prominent example of how supportive housing can raise the development standard in a distressed area, helping to spur other developers and business to invest.
It costs essentially the same amount of money to house someone in stable, supportive housing as it does to keep that person homeless and stuck in the revolving door of high-cost crisis care and emergency housing. The Corporation for Supportive Housing’s (CSH’s) cost studies prove that we can either waste money keeping people homeless or spend those dollars on a long-term solution that produces positive results for people and their communities.
The most comprehensive case for supportive housing is made by a recently released study from the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Mental Health Policy and Services Research. Researchers tracked the cost of nearly 5,000 mentally ill people in New York City for two years while they were homeless and for two years after they were housed. They concluded:
+ Supportive and transitional housing created an average annual savings of $16,282 by reducing the use of public services: 72% of savings esulted from a decline in the use of public health services; 23% from a decline in shelter use; and 5% from reduced incarceration of the homeless mentally ill.
+ This reduction in hospitalizations, incarcerations, and shelter costs nearly covered the cost of developing, operating and providing services in supportive housing. After deducting the public benefits, the average NY/NY supportive housing unit cost only $995 per year.
In other words, based on the most conservative assumptions - without taking into account the positive impacts on health status and employment status, or improvements to neighborhoods and communities - it costs little more to permanently house and support people than it does to leave them homeless.
Further evidence shows that supportive housing provides public benefits beyond these savings. An analysis of the Connecticut Supportive Housing Demonstration Program found that supportive housing improved neighborhood safety and beautification, increasing or stabilizing property values in most communities. Years of experience confirm that neighbors embrace supportive housing as an asset to their communities.
"Anytime you put $1.2 million into a development in the middle of a neighborhood, along with social services, a well-kept, nice building on the outside, it is a major asset to the neighborhood. I have toured the facility and was impressed. It was a wellconceived and well-executed project."
Supportive housing is permanent housing.
People who live in supportive housing sign leases and pay rent, just like their neighbors. Supportive housing and shelters aren’t the same thing, but they complement each other. Shelters work well for what they’re designed for—emergencies and short-term situations, not as long-term housing.
Supportive housing is cost effective.
It costs essentially the same amount of money to house someone in stable, supportive housing as it does to keep that person homeless and stuck in the revolving door of high-cost crisis care and emergency housing. CSH’s cost studies prove that we can either waste money keeping people homeless or spend those dollars on a long-term solution that produces positive results for people and their communities.
(excerpted from a published survey of neighbors and business owners, published in the Connecticut Supportive Housing Demonstration Program Evaluation Report, October 1999)
