Note: I run a debate club, which recently debated the Motion “This House Supports Enforcing Public Camping Bans When Shelter is Available and Offered”. I was the speaker in favor of the Motion (i.e., to enforce bans on public camping). This series of posts summarizes my speaking points.
First, a few definitions and recap:
Public Camping: Making living accommodations or preparations to sleep, sleep, erecting a tent, or storing belongings in prohibited areas.
Prohibited areas: public right-of-ways, such as streets, alleys, sidewalks, plazas, and entrances to buildings, as well as park areas with public access that are not designated camping sites or are off-hours for recreational use, e.g., overnight.
Reasonable and safe shelter: at a minimum, conditions that are conducive to restful sleep: quiet, and supervised, with storage space and a place to keep pets. Also, sufficiently clean and uncrowded to protect shelter residents from contagious diseases and criminal victimization. (More on suitable and optimal shelters in a later post)
In the first post , I addressed why public camping should be prohibited, e.g., negative environmental impact, danger to public health, property damage, criminal activity (e.g., petty theft), victimization of homeless individuals (e.g., assault), threats to business viability, illegitimate use of public space, and costs to society (e.g., government, criminal justice, and medical expenditures).
I will now argue that suitable shelter space for all unsheltered homeless in a given area is feasible and affordable, starting with an analysis of the costs associated with unsheltered homelessness:
Explanation of Terms:
Medical and Behavioral Health expenditures include emergency room visits, outpatient care for homeless residents, and behavioral health interventions
Criminal Justice related expenditures include probation, custody mental health care, and jail/court costs.
Other City/County expenditures includes things like:
Provide legal services on homeless issues and activities to City/County staff
Contract for private security to address homeless issues in certain trouble spots
Intake, care and release of pets of the homeless
Buildings Inspectors to secure vacant buildings
Homeless camp clean ups in parks, trails and river parkways:
Fire Department fire calls for persons experiencing homelessness
Fire Department medical calls for persons experiencing homelessness
Police Department response to calls flagged as "transient"
Note that the $87,300 does not include federal spending unaccounted for in City/County databases. I’m not even going there. The point is that a whole lot of money is spent on the homeless and when you subtract out costs related to existing shelters and housing, most of that money is spent on issues related to being unsheltered.
The Bigger Point: Guaranteed shelter would pay for itself because it would greatly reduce the costs associated with unsheltered living, e.g., costs related to medical emergencies, criminal justice involvement, law enforcement, security, clean up, property repair, public health, etc.
If sheltering all homeless reduced such costs by a third, the new shelters would essentially pay for themselves. That’s assuming shelter operating costs - including 24/7 supervision, security, sanitation services, breakfast/dinner - would be less than $30,000 per bed per year - a not unreasonable assumption given recent estimates of annual operating costs of shelters in some of the bigger cities*:
New York City spends $29,000 per bed.
A Los Angeles study estimated it would cost $15,400 - $29,000 per bed.
Oakland estimated cabin communities would cost $21,250 per bed.
Navigation Centers in San Francisco were estimated to cost $33-38,000 per bed.
Additional shelters do not have to compete for funding with permanent housing because the very existence of shelters frees up funds that would otherwise be unavailable. In other words, building shelters would not take money away from permanent housing projects, because the money wouldn’t exist in the absence of shelters.
Next: Instead of shelters, why not build more permanent housing so that homeless individuals can move directly from the streets to their own place?
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* Of course, shelter costs would be much lower in less expensive towns and cities.
References:
Bay Area Homelessness: A Regional View of a Regional Crisis Bay Area Council Economic Institute. April 2019
Report on Emergency Framework to Homelessness Plan submitted by Paul Duncan, Associate Director of Procurement and Performance Management/Los Angeles Homeless Authority. June 18, 2018