5 ms·

In San Francisco, nearly $40K is spent per homeless person. How much money do we need to spend and how should we spend it?

bluetidepro 8y ago
Where did you get that stat? Not debating it, just curious about this data and what else it has.
- dumbfoundded 8y ago
  The budget is ~$270M: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/29-million-increase-for-San-Francisco-12902707.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/29-million-incre... The number of homeless people is around 7,500. This also doesn't include medical emergency services, private organizations, federal & state programs and many other sources of money. This is just the budget for the city program.
perfmode 8y ago
does it not dawn on you that perhaps this is the wrong way to think about solving the problem?
- rootusrootus 8y ago
  I think it's great to hear this number, as long as it's accurate. A lot of regular folks probably think we spend very little on homeless people, so they think anything we do to help will be a net cost and more taxes. Getting people aware that we spend money either way is very helpful because then you can make arguments about how to save money. If we spend 40K right now, then how much can we save if we spend $10K a year instead in free housing. I.e. what SLC did.
wolfgang42 8y ago
Measuring "dollars per homeless person" is, IMO, worse than useless. The problem is that the better you do the job, the worse the number looks. If you manage to house all but 1 person, suddenly it rockets into millions of dollars per remaining homeless person!
- gpm 8y ago
  If there's one homeless person and you're spending millions of dollars on them, perhaps you should stop?
  - nkurz 8y ago
    How do you distinguish between A) unnecessarily spending millions of dollars on a single homeless person and B) spending millions of dollars to reduce the otherwise large homeless population to only one? The best approach is probably not to cut spending to zero and then wait to see what happens. But perhaps it's reasonable to cut spending by 10-25% and then monitor the results?
    - gpm 8y ago
      By distinguishing between funding to homeless people, and funding to at risk but still homed people? Also by making sure we are counting people correctly (if 10 people are all temporarily homeless at some point during the use of the funding, and then homed, we had 10 homeless people not 0).
      - wolfgang42 8y ago
        So as soon as someone moves from being classified as "homeless" to "homed", you have to shuffle around all the budgets for every service you're providing to them? This seems like a good way to increase bureaucratic overhead and ways for people to fall through the gaps, with the only advantage being neater numbers for bean-counting.
        gpm 8y ago
        If we are trying to measure how much money we spend per homeless person we have to identify what portion of the money goes to them. That can just be done by measuring instead of budgeting before hand of course...
- dumbfoundded 8y ago
nyghtly 8y ago
"How should we spend it?" Give people money. Unfortunately, you could only do this effectively on a national level. In San Francisco, $40k isn't even enough to cover cost of living. You could also give people housing vouchers, but you need to have available affordable housing for that to work. [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/how-expensive-is-san-francisco-2015-9 https://www.businessinsider.com/how-expensive-is-san-francis...
- nradov 8y ago
  Giving people money can work well for those who are just down on their luck, but it's pointless and counterproductive for those who are addicted and/or seriously mentally ill. Those people need active interventions, not passive hand outs.
  - nyghtly 8y ago
    Then offer them treatment as well, but the fact remains that being poor with a substance use disorder is worse than having money with a substance use disorder. Let me ask you this: if someone doesn't have money, how do they get drugs? Refusing help to people with substance use disorder is a form of toxic moralizing that does nothing to help them.

bluetidepro 8y ago

Where did you get that stat? Not debating it, just curious about this data and what else it has.

dumbfoundded 8y ago
The budget is ~$270M: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/29-million-increase-for-San-Francisco-12902707.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/29-million-incre... The number of homeless people is around 7,500. This also doesn't include medical emergency services, private organizations, federal & state programs and many other sources of money. This is just the budget for the city program.

perfmode 8y ago

does it not dawn on you that perhaps this is the wrong way to think about solving the problem?

rootusrootus 8y ago
I think it's great to hear this number, as long as it's accurate. A lot of regular folks probably think we spend very little on homeless people, so they think anything we do to help will be a net cost and more taxes. Getting people aware that we spend money either way is very helpful because then you can make arguments about how to save money. If we spend 40K right now, then how much can we save if we spend $10K a year instead in free housing. I.e. what SLC did.

wolfgang42 8y ago

Measuring "dollars per homeless person" is, IMO, worse than useless. The problem is that the better you do the job, the worse the number looks. If you manage to house all but 1 person, suddenly it rockets into millions of dollars per remaining homeless person!

gpm 8y ago
If there's one homeless person and you're spending millions of dollars on them, perhaps you should stop?
- nkurz 8y ago
  How do you distinguish between A) unnecessarily spending millions of dollars on a single homeless person and B) spending millions of dollars to reduce the otherwise large homeless population to only one? The best approach is probably not to cut spending to zero and then wait to see what happens. But perhaps it's reasonable to cut spending by 10-25% and then monitor the results?
  - gpm 8y ago
    By distinguishing between funding to homeless people, and funding to at risk but still homed people? Also by making sure we are counting people correctly (if 10 people are all temporarily homeless at some point during the use of the funding, and then homed, we had 10 homeless people not 0).
    - wolfgang42 8y ago
      So as soon as someone moves from being classified as "homeless" to "homed", you have to shuffle around all the budgets for every service you're providing to them? This seems like a good way to increase bureaucratic overhead and ways for people to fall through the gaps, with the only advantage being neater numbers for bean-counting.
      - gpm 8y ago
        If we are trying to measure how much money we spend per homeless person we have to identify what portion of the money goes to them. That can just be done by measuring instead of budgeting before hand of course...
dumbfoundded 8y ago

nyghtly 8y ago

"How should we spend it?" Give people money. Unfortunately, you could only do this effectively on a national level. In San Francisco, $40k isn't even enough to cover cost of living. You could also give people housing vouchers, but you need to have available affordable housing for that to work. [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/how-expensive-is-san-francisco-2015-9 https://www.businessinsider.com/how-expensive-is-san-francis...

nradov 8y ago
Giving people money can work well for those who are just down on their luck, but it's pointless and counterproductive for those who are addicted and/or seriously mentally ill. Those people need active interventions, not passive hand outs.
- nyghtly 8y ago
  Then offer them treatment as well, but the fact remains that being poor with a substance use disorder is worse than having money with a substance use disorder. Let me ask you this: if someone doesn't have money, how do they get drugs? Refusing help to people with substance use disorder is a form of toxic moralizing that does nothing to help them.