Leaving Homeless Person On The Streets: $31,065. Giving Them Housing: $10,051.

[NewDeal_Dem]

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/05/27/3441772/florida-homeless-financial-study/

The most recent count found 1,577 chronically homeless individuals living in three central Florida counties — Osceola, Seminole, and Orange, which includes Orlando. As a result, the region is paying nearly $50 million annually to let homeless people languish on the streets.

There is a far cheaper option though: giving homeless people housing and supportive services. The study found that it would cost taxpayers just $10,051 per homeless person to give them a permanent place to live and services like job training and health care. That figure is 68 percent less than the public currently spends by allowing homeless people to remain on the streets. If central Florida took the permanent supportive housing approach, it could save $350 million over the next decade.

This is just the latest study showing how fiscally irresponsible it is for society to allow homelessness to continue. A study in Charlotte earlier this year
found a new apartment complex oriented towards homeless people saved taxpayers $1.8 million in the first year alone. Similarly, the Centennial State will save millions by giving homeless people in southeast Colorado a place to live. And in Osceola County, Florida, researchers earlier this year found that taxpayers had spent $5,081,680 over the past decade in incarceration expenses to repeatedly jail just 37 chronically homeless people.

[Sunlei]

1. same thing with the hunt and pogroms against undocumented persons. There is a 'for profit' industry

built around undocumented and homeless persons.

[daredtowork]

2. Can't Put a Price on Judge Judyism

So many things could get done for the poorest and most vulnerable segments of society if people would just consider the economic efficiencies. But in the end it comes down to a suspicion that poor people made "bad decisions" that made them poor, and anything done to help them is a "redistribution" from a "deserving" taxpayer pocket to a mooch. That's why people would rather spend twice as much on a fraud investigator that might punish pick out and punish a poor person for getting away with something than on doing stuff that would help the poor.

This is LITERALLY true - in Oakland, at least. In Oakland there is "no" money to offer welfare (loan!) aid of $336/month for more than 3/12 months. But there is enough money to guarantee that all welfare recipients will be investigated, surveilled, neighbors interviewed, etc. Every person who is driven to homelessness keeps many employed in cushy middle class jobs.

[NewDeal_Dem]

4. yes; it's sad and counter-productive but it serves someone. i wonder who.

[hifiguy]

9. The desire to punish the other is so strong in American culture

it even overcomes the hardest of economic facts. Twas ever thus.

[Enthusiast]

10. Is it the Puritanical influence?

[MrScorpio]

3. But allowing the homeless to languish in streets satisfies feelings of regressive self-righteousness

Can anyone ever put a price tag on looking down on the unfortunate plights of others and judging them in a harsh and unfair manner, not to mention expressing paranoid feelings that the unworthy are dipping their filthy hands into one's pocket?

Hey, it may in fact cost more money in the long run to be a heartless SOB, but some things are just plain worth it.

[NewDeal_Dem]

5. it's horrible to think that some people would actually feel that way.

[daredtowork]

6. I think for many it's an indirect/subconscious impulse

Very similar to racism in white rural towns. If you ask most people if they are racist, they will say no. If you ask they why they just voted Republican, they will look all shifty eyed and not want to admit why. It's because their gut feeling (pounded in by Fox propaganda) is that immigrants took their jobs and black people are getting by without working on welfare. If they were directly confronted with the real story of someone they knew - a neighbor - then they want to help. But if they can indirectly punish the perceived cause of the problem (which is taking place far away, at the other end of arcane bureaucracies), they will.

[MrScorpio]

7. Amen. nt

[Enthusiast]

11. I'm with you.

[Downwinder]

8. It is cheaper to get them a room at Days Inn

than it is to lock them up. But then that would be welfare. We can't have that, can we?

[bemildred]

12. Grinding the faces of the poor is one of the favored amusements of the rich.

Always has been.

[reddread]

13. or the crooks in charge can hook their friends up with federal contracts and its 157,000 per

these $11 million dollar "housing first" ripoff housing structures for 69 residents appear to be the rage.
the math gets pretty ugly fast when scumbag politicians appropriate a workable solution as a buzzword to
cover graft and obscene profiteering while keeping the status quo horror show -minus 69 folks who HAVE to live alone
in structures wired for absolute surveillance.
i think its important to understand the reality as it contrasts with the possibilities.
Housing First has been turned into a cover for the SOS.