Columbus, OH is entering its fifth year of a radical approach to dealing with homelessness, providing subsidised housing instead of shelter-beds, and the program is looking like a real success, both at addressing homelessness and at curbing budgets for coping with homelessness-related problems. I've passed three public urinators and two public defecators, two passed out junkies and two fixing, all on my block, just this weekend. Maybe San Francisco can look to Columbus for some answers before the city is destroyed by human-feces-borne disease, infectious needles and flash-floods of toxic piss.
Studying shelters in Philadelphia and New York City in the 1990s, Culhane found that although the long-term homeless made up only 10 percent of the homeless population over three years, they were using half of all shelter beds on any given night. And when Culhane compared the costs of supporting those with and without permanent housing, he discovered that it cost a city just $1,000 more annually per person to offer supportive housing – with services for mental health, addictions, employment, and other needs – than to care for the chronically homeless.
