This is a great video focusing on one of my favorite programs, Housing First:

Nowhere To Go But Jail? OverCriminalized: Homelessness by BRAVE NEW FILMS: JUSTICE

The video describes how each homeless person was costing Salt Lake City an average of $20,000 per year—mostly from jail time and emergency services. Personally, I became homeless because I was mentally ill. But after I lived outside for one year, my mental illness became much more severe. Then, I required a three week hospitalization, which cost about $500-1,000 a day.

While homeless, it can be hard not to commit petty crimes such as trespassing and loitering. The homeless are often jailed for behavior stemming from their homeless lifestyle. This also hits close to home for me. While homeless, I was arrested and jailed for trespassing on a university campus where I had once been an honors student. Even a brief incarceration like mine can be exorbitantly expensive.

Lloyd Pendleton, director of the Utah Homeless Task Force, discovered that providing both housing and case management for homeless people cost only $7,800 per year, per person. This is less than half the cost they incurred while living on the streets.

The experts in this video believe that Housing First is not only the most humane way to serve the homeless, but also the most economical way.

With the Housing First project, the homeless are not required to be sober or clean in order to secure housing. Once they have housing, they are invited to change their lives, if they want to. Providing stable housing puts many people in a position where they finally feel the support and empowerment they need to stop drinking, fight other addictions, rebuild their lives, and reintegrate into the community.

Because of Housing First, the number of homeless people in Salt Lake City has gone down 72% since 2005.

The video also describes how Housing First has effectively taken many formerly homeless people out of the judicial system.

I wish that Housing First existed in the part of Los Angeles where I was homeless in 2006-7. It may have saved a year of my life that was lost to homelessness. And if I had been in psychiatric treatment sooner, it may have saved well over $10,000 in hospital bills.