Providing housing for homeless alcoholics saves us all tax dollars
Many programs that offer housing to homeless alcoholics require that these individuals stay sober, and that they attend programs that help them kick their addiction.
But an intriguing new study suggests that even those housing programs that don’t require sobriety still reduce health-care costs.
According to a story in U.S. News & World Report, providing housing to homeless alcoholics reduces health-care costs regardless of the homeless people’s sobriety.
Researchers studied a program called Housing First. This program removes the usual requirements of sobriety and mandatory attendance at alcohol-treatment programs, according to the U.S. News & World Reports story.
The study results were interesting: In the year before the study, 95 participants who were provided housing generated median costs of $4,066 a month each for services and legal costs such as sobering-center use, medical services and publicly funded alcohol and drug detoxification and treatment. The total cost of these services for all 95 participants came in at more than $8.1 million during a one-year period.
After entering the Housing First program, though, the costs per month for every participant fell to $1,492 after six months and $958 after one year. The total cost for all 95 participants for one year stood at slightly more than $4 million. For those not good at math, that’s a total drop in costs of more than $4 million.
The lesson here? First, it pays to provide housing to the homeless who are suffering from addictions. Taxpayers will have to ultimately spend fewer dollars on these people if they’re in quality shelter. Secondly, it’s unrealistic to expect an addict — especially one facing the challenges of being homeless, which often includes some form of mental illness — to suddenly be able to remain sober. Dropping the sobriety requirement for housing programs seems to be the humane thing to do.
