June 13, 2007 — Providing free housing to the homeless can often cost much less than doing nothing at all, a federal official told the V.I. Interagency Council on Homelessness at a meeting Wednesday.
The meeting at St. Croix’s The Palms at Pelican Cove brought together officials from Human Services, Health and other agencies that, along with representatives of private-sector charitable organizations, make up the local ICH. They heard from Phillip F. Mangano, executive director of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, who talked about President George W. Bush’s initiative to end chronic homelessness in the U.S.
Mangano described how states and localities throughout the country were forming their own interagency councils, coordinating with the federal Interagency Council and forming 10-year plans to reach that goal. Effective plans, Mangano said, should be driven by research and data, performance and results.
Instead of reinventing the wheel and ineffectively providing services that don’t address the root problems, programs should look at academic studies and at what innovative approaches have worked in other locales, he said.
“Research has shown the majority of homeless people are not addicted and not mentally ill,” Mangano said. “Most come in and out of homelessness relatively rapidly. But there is a core of between 10 and 20 percent of the homeless that stay that way, and that use more than half the resources allocated to the problem. It was that pressure that prompted the president to say we will end chronic homelessness.”
Before the 1990s, nearly all programs for the homeless were driven by a basic charitable impulse, such as providing food and blankets, Mangano said. But these efforts and expenditures have done little to nothing to reduce actual homelessness, he said. To solve the problem, Mangano urged innovation and the sharing of ideas between organizations nationwide.
At its root, Mangano said, the problem is even simpler than it seems.
“What is the central antidote to end someone’s homelessness?” Mangano asked. “If you ask a homeless person, they will tell you. They never ask for a pill, program or protocol. They ask for a place to stay.”
Mangano told the gathering about several studies, both scientific and more informal, indicating the high cost of not addressing homelessness.
“Two frustrated police officers in New York added up the figures for some of the homeless men they dealt with all the time,” he said. “They found two individuals consuming more than $100,000 every year in emergency room and other resources. Another fellow they called 'Million Dollar Murray' used more than a million dollars in resources over 10 years, from emergency-room visits to police to social services. And at the end of the time, he was still on the streets. He died on the streets. We spent a million dollars to do nothing.”
Mangano provided other examples.
“In San Diego, a study tracked 18 chronic homeless," he said. "The total cost for the 18 was over $3 million — about $200,000 per person. If we had gotten them oceanside penthouse condominiums with concierge service, that would have been less expensive than doing nothing.”
When advocates speak of providing housing to untreated addicts and alcoholics, people worry the housing will become like a homeless camp or a crack house, but this turns out to be an unfounded concern, Mangano said.
“In Seattle, they created 75 units of permanent housing for chronic homeless, including the mentally ill and addicts,” he said. “Yes, there was drinking going on, but much less than you’d think and certainly less than at a typical fraternity house. The tone of the place was more like a nursing home. After a year, there was a reduction in drug use and a reduction in emergency-room medical care, resulting in cost savings.”
During a PowerPoint presentation, Mangano projected a map of the U.S. with localities that have had recent success reducing homelessness through the interagency approach being promoted by the Bush administration.
“These programs have shown great results,” he said. “The most extreme case is Portland, Ore., who saw a 70-percent reduction in two-and-a-half years. I didn’t believe it, and called to check. They explained what was happening, and the numbers were accurate.”
Most places had reductions in the 15 to 20 percent range, Mangano said.
After Mangano spoke, Human Services Commissioner Chris Finch briefly addressed local efforts, announcing that Brenda Walwyn would be the point person in Human Services assigned to develop the ICH 10-year plan. Bush appointed Mangano to lead the USICH in March 2002. The organization’s mandate is to create the federal strategy and coordinate the nationwide response to meet Bush’s goal of ending chronic homelessness in the U.S. in the next 10 years.
The USICH is comprised of 20 cabinet secretaries and agency heads. Governors of 53 states and territories have taken steps to create state interagency councils on homelessness, while more than 220 mayors and county executives have either completed or are underway with 10-year plans to end chronic homelessness.
More information on the federal program and its state partners can be found at usich.gov.
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