'Housing is health care': 'Stunning' numbers show true costs of homelessness to Florida communities
by Amanda Durish Cook
In a recently released study, the Central Florida Commission on Homelessness found that it costs the public more money to ignore the homeless and criminalize their actions than it does to house them.
Tracking public expenditures on 107 long-term homeless residents living in Orange, Osceola and Seminole counties, researchers found that each homeless person costs taxpayers $31,065 each year, compared to the about $10,000 it would cost to house them permanently.
Andrae Bailey, CEO of the Central Florida Commission on Homelessness, called the numbers “stunning.”
“Homeless advocates have known this for a long time. It’s far cheaper to permanently house someone,” said Cindy Funkhouser, president and CEO of the Sulzbacher Center for the homeless. Funkhouser said that the facility uses a 2006 cost-analysis study from Denver that concluded similar numbers.
The cost to permanently house someone in the Duval area in “permanent supportive housing” per year totals $12,000, according to Funkhouser.
“We’re not talking about sheltering someone. We’re talking about permanent housing with wraparound services,” she said. Wraparound services include case management, behavioral health services and job training, among others.
Authors of Creative Housing Solutions’ Central Florida study say costs associated with law enforcement and medical care keep the price of living on the streets high.
The homeless within the Beaches community usually find themselves on a merry-go-round of day shelters, the streets and jail. Many are arrested for violating ordinances like drinking in public or camping. While most of the time those violations would generate a notice-to-appear ticket for a first-time offenders, most homeless aren’t eligible because they’ve been arrested before — some upwards of six times within a year.
Funkhouser said that the county jail booking fee alone is $800.
“It’s a very expensive way of housing someone,” she explained.
Funkhouser maintained that a homeless lifestyle naturally lends itself to crimes like trespassing and urinating in public — and JSO and the Jacksonville Beach Police Department have taken notice.
“JSO came to us about a year and a half ago and said, ‘Look, we know this doesn’t make sense; we’re arresting dozens and dozens of the same people. We need to break this cycle,’” Funkhouser said.
In response, the Sulzbacher Center partnered with the law enforcement agency and several other city departments to create the Chronically Homeless Offender Program, or CHOP. Under the 12-month pilot program, 20 randomly selected homeless people with multiple arrests were flagged in JSO’s systems, although unbeknownst to them. Upon an additional arrest, the homeless are given a choice: either spend the 4-6 months in jail that their combined misdemeanors would earn them, or enter the Sulzbacher’s permanent housing solutions program with the assistance of a supportive living coach and weekly visits from Sulzbacher staff.
Within a few months of the launch of the program in Jacksonville, three offenders have been given the choice. All three chose housing.
Last month, Jacksonville Beach City Council approved a measure to launch a smaller-scale version of the pilot program with five test subjects set to be selected.
Funkhouser said that Jacksonville Beach Mayor Charlie Latham and Chief of Police Patrick Dooley “get it” and are working with Sulzbacher Center for positive change.
“Jacksonville Beach is buying into the program. They’re re-arresting and re-arresting the same people out there. More so, because there are no shelters,” said Funkhouser who noted that the homeless population at the Beaches have a trend of alcoholism.
Once an individual enters CHOP housing, they’re put into an apartment from a scattered selection of 50-plus Jacksonville landlords who work with the Sulzbacher Center. Funkhouser said that, while there are a few landlords at the Beaches who work with the center, it’s unlikely that the homeless will go to a Beaches-area residence because the cost of housing is prohibitively high for the program east of the Intracoastal.
Neither the Neptune Beach, Atlantic Beach or Jacksonville Beach police departments keep statistics on how many homeless are arrested annually. David Sembach, chief of the Neptune Beach Police Department, said no statistics on homeless/transient arrests are kept by the NBPD because they most likely wouldn’t be accurate.
“Many homeless give us fake addresses, former addresses or refuse to give us an address for one reason or another,” he said. “Only a small percentage of our contacts with the homeless/transients result in arrests.”
Sembach said that public intoxication, drinking in public, illegal camping and trespassing/ camping are the lion’s share of the homeless offenses in Neptune Beach.
“Oftentimes, we find persons with outstanding warrants from other jurisdictions and arrest them,” he added.
In Jacksonville Beach, 276 homeless were counted last year, making it the Beaches city with the largest homeless contingent. Jacksonville Beach has long had a city ordinance that prohibits overnight shelters.
In 2003, a federal lawsuit was filed against Jacksonville Beach by the Emergency Services and Homeless Coalition of Jacksonville on behalf of three homeless people who were arrested for violating an anti-camping ordinance and had their belongings seized and destroyed. The lawsuit claimed that the city’s no-camping policy infringed on the homeless’ right to live without fear of arrest. Eventually, the parties jointly dismissed the case because the plaintiffs weren’t able to continue the suit.
Ten years later, Jacksonville Beach Mayor Charlie Latham held a workshop to gather information on vagrancy and homelessness within the city.
Sembach said that his police department refers people to Mission House and Beaches Emergency Assistance Ministry. Because Neptune Beach doesn’t have any homeless programs; Sembach said his officers often offer up their own money to pay for the bus fare to get to an overnight shelter downtown.
Funkhouser said that she no longer believes that shelters provide a solution to the problem of homelessness; she now focuses her attention on a housing-first model.
“We want to put them back into society. We don’t want to just stick them in a building,” she said. “I have 120 men in a barracks-style room, and some of these are vets with [post-traumatic stress disorder]. That’s not a good idea.”
Funkhouser often repeats the motto, “Housing is health care.”
“When you leave someone on the street, any illness they have is going to be more acute,” she explained, noting that something as simple as insulin shots for the homeless with diabetes often warrant an expensive ER trip.
“We’re keeping people out of jail and out of the ER,” she said.
In a 2012 report on homelessness by the University of North Florida’s Department of Sociology and Anthropology, nearly 3,000 homeless individuals in Duval, Clay and Nassau counties were asked what their top three needs were. Seventy percent of them ranked housing and shelter on the top of their list — over food, medical treatment and a job.
Recurring problems, recurring costs
In early June, Neptune Beach police found a man sleeping on a private dock. The man ran away when he noticed officers, and he was Tasered. Jacksonville Fire and Rescue had to be called to medically clear the man before he could be taken to jail. In mid-June in Atlantic Beach, a disabled wheelchair-bound man who was found not wearing pants was arrested and taken to jail. The four hours of police work it took were estimated to cost nearly $193 by ABPD. In Jacksonville Beach, a 44-year-old transient was arrested and jailed for drinking on the beach on June 16 and June 19. He had been arrested for the same offense four times last year.
However, Funkhouser said that there’s a decrease in the homeless population at the Beaches that she attributes to social services working together.
According to Sembach, more money should be directed into mental health and substance abuse programs. He said money spent on the “war on drugs” should be used instead to fund prevention and care programs that are “grossly underfunded.”
“With over 300 million people in this country and over 3 million of them homeless for one reason or another, it is obvious that we are not doing a very good job of solving the problem. … More must be done to alleviate a problem that — although I personally do not believe will ever be completely eradicated — I do believe that it can be brought down to manageable levels. Fewer people in jail means more money for other long overdue social projects,” Sembach said. “… When current policies and practices do not work, it is time to reexamine our priorities and change those that obviously are not working. “
Funkhouser stressed that the permanent housing issue isn’t a matter of individuals “deserving it.”
“The way that the community needs to look at it is: It’s saving money. That alone should appeal to everyone. I don’t know how anyone could argue against it,” she said. “I don’t know why it’s such a hard sell.”
Amanda Durish Cook: (904) 359-4665
Read more at Jacksonville.com:
http://jacksonville.com/community/shorelines/2014-06-27/story/housing-health-care-stunning-numbers-show-true-costs#ixzz35wVOHmVV
