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Pay For Success Could Be Boise’s Homelessness Game-Changer
Sven Berg – Idaho Statesman
Right now, Pay for Success looks like so much jargon on a very boring piece of paper, but it could change the fundamentals of homelessness in Ada County.
Boise Mayor David Bieter’s assistant, Diana Lachiondo, has taken it on herself to cobble together an alliance of groups that stand to save some pretty significant coin by getting chronically homeless people off the streets and into stable homes, especially if those homes come with supportive services such as addiction and mental health treatment and basic life coaching.
Who’s on the list of potential savers? Just imagine a homeless person getting into legal or health trouble, then imagine all the services that will come to bear, and you pretty much have your answer. Hospitals save people who’ve passed out so drunk or high that their survival is no longer guaranteed. If these people are sleeping outside, exposed to the elements night after night, that complicates the issue.
Treatment is expensive. So is the ambulance ride. So is law enforcement response to problems that arise among chronically homeless people. And who’s going to pay? Certainly not a person whose best source of income is begging for loose change on a street corner. Hospitals and taxpayers are stuck with the tab.
The point is that responding to homeless people’s emergencies is far more expensive than a home. The city of Boise estimates it would save anywhere between $12,800 and $48,200 per year, per chronically homeless person
The savings are a big reason places like Salt Lake City has moved to a ‘housing first’ approach to chronic homelessness.
But there’s a problem here: a big upfront cost — Lachiondo estimated it would be somewhere north of $2 million — to provide permanent, supported housing for Boise’s 80 to 90 chronically homeless people.