Housing Homeless Who Are Mentally Ill Cuts Their Emergency Costs, Study Says
Getting mentally ill homeless people off the streets and into supportive housing costs taxpayers only slightly more than leaving them to fend for themselves, according to a study to be released today.
Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania Health System in Philadelphia studied nearly 10,000 mentally ill homeless people in New York, half of whom were placed in government-funded housing with mental-health assistance. The individuals who were not housed ended up costing taxpayers, on average, $40,500 a year for their time in emergency rooms, psychiatric hospitals, shelters and prisons.
But those provided with housing and mental-health assistance used far fewer emergency-type services, the study found. Including that huge savings, researchers found setting up the mentally ill homeless in housing with support services costs only about $994 more than the $40,500 these individuals run up when they don't have homes.
While the five-year study focuses only on New York, homeless advocates say the results could have a powerful effect across the country, where an estimated 110,000 chronically homeless people have mental illnesses. The research could help convince government leaders about the cost-effectiveness of doing more to solve the problem of mentally ill homeless people in major cities.
“A considerable amount of public dollars are spent essentially maintaining people in a state of homelessness,” said the study's lead author, Dennis P. Culhane, associate professor of social welfare policy at the University of Pennsylvania. Mr. Culhane added that the cost-reduction estimates of housing the mentally ill in his study are conservative, considering he didn't include the savings that come from fewer burdens on the police and court systems, nor the economic impact of homelessness on local businesses and tourism.
“This study shows that providing supportive housing to homeless people with psychiatric disabilities is not only the right thing to do, but the smart thing to do,” said Carla Javits, President of the Corporation for Supportive Housing, a national nonprofit group on homelessness and a funder of the study. The study also was backed by the Fannie Mae Foundation in Washington, the United Hospital Fund of New York, the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation in Los Angeles and the Rhodebeck Charitable Trust in New York.
The study is among the most comprehensive estimates of the costs society incurs because of the mentally ill homeless. The researchers obtained the costs of specific individuals, matching their names and Social Security numbers as they wended their way through various shelters, hospitals and prison systems during several years. It took Mr. Culhane four years to get seven New York City and State agencies that oversee shelters, jails and hospital reimbursements just to agree to share their data with him for this study.
Among the findings, the researchers determined that the average homeless person with severe mental illness works up a huge bill in one year by spending 4.5 months in a shelter, two months in state psychiatric hospitals, seven weeks in various hospitals, and nearly three weeks in jail or prison.