Data on the Costs of Homelessness
(some need to be updated)
In New York City, a family living in a shelter for a year costs the city $36,000 per year;
shelter for a single adult costs $23,000.
– Coalition for the Homeless,
http://www.coalitionforthehomeless.org/advocacy/basic_facts.html
Keeping a solitary person out of city shelters for a month can save $225 to $375;
and keeping a family of three or four persons out of the shelters can save at least
$675 to $1500.
– Eric Lindblom, “Towards a Comprehensive Homelessness-Prevention
Strategy,” in Housing Policy Debate by Fannie Mae, Vol. 2, Issue 3 (1991) at
970, 1003.
The average cost of detaining one person for one day in jail in the U.S. is over
$40.00, excluding the police resources utilized in the arrest process. According to
HUD figures obtained in an evaluation of its Supportive Housing Demonstration
Program, the cost of providing transitional housing, which includes not only
housing and food but also transportation and counseling services, is approximately
$30.90 per person per day.
– Maria Foscarinis, Kelly Cunningham-Bowers, Kristen E. Brown, “Out of Sight
– Out of Mind? The Continuing Trend Toward Criminalization of Homelessness,”
Georgetown Journal on Poverty Law and Policy, volume 6, 1999.
San Diego Police Department estimated that the annual cost of repeatedly
arresting, transporting, jailing, and filling out paperwork about the city’s 90
downtown public alcoholics was about $320,000, ($200,000 + 60% overhead) not
including the cost to city government as a whole, which also has to pay for public
defenders, prosecutors, and court time. Private sector costs (particularly lost
business) add another huge dimension to the social cost of inept handling of public
inebriates. Placing those same 90 people in recovery camp for 6-month sentences
(with good behavior credits, only four months’ time actually in the program)
would cost about the same as the police costs alone - $320,000.
– “A
Street Is Not a Home” by Judge Robert Coates, Buffalo, N.Y.1990.
Police are increasingly called on to respond to homeless and mentally ill persons
who are engaged in nuisance or “quality of life” offenses... the defendants end up
cycling in and out of jail where their situation deteriorates, undermining their
efforts to obtain work, driver’s licenses, homes, and normal lives. Taxpayers bear
the heavy cost for this counterproductive cycling of the homeless and mentally ill
in and out of jail, considering it costs $355 for the police to book a homeless
person on an outstanding warrant and bring him or her to court, and also costs
upwards of $40 per day when the homeless person is housed in jail, and upwards
of $400 per day for those who need psychiatric care.
– A Home for Every Californian: The Recommendations of the Senate Bipartisan
Task Force on Homelessness for 2001, March 2001, at 17.