WBIR’s excellent story about Gary Waddell raised a question from a commenter at the WBIR site. I think the commenter wants to know how we know about the costs associated with chronic homelessness.
Good question. It’s very hard to nail down an airtight answer. This year, Dr. Roger Nooe will be refining the data below. Until then, the following data, from 2006, are the latest local data.
Dr. Nooe’s work is posted here with his permission.
Local Cost Estimates (Knoxville, Tennessee)
A Study by Dr. Roger Nooe
Professor Emeritus: University of Tennessee College of Social Work
A number of national studies have documented that a homeless individual, suffering from mental illness and substance abuse will consume an average of approximately $44,000.00 annually in public services—jail, emergency room, and other community expenditures.
A local, one-year examination of twenty-five (25) homeless individuals in Knoxville, Tennessee, illuminates the cost of repeated cycling through jail, detox, hospitalization and homelessness.
The twenty-five individuals reported
- 20 instances of inpatient hospitalization (20 x a minimum one-day x $1,500.00 = $30,000.00)
- 14 instances of psychiatric hospitalization (14 x 3 days x $843.00 = $35,406.00)
- 85 admissions for detox (85 x 5 days x $500 = $212,500.00)
- 141 arrests for public intoxication (141 x $500 = $70,500.00)
- 2,551 days in jail (2,551 x $197.00 = $502,547.00).
These conservative estimates suggest that jail and hospitalization costs total approximately $850,953.00 for the twenty-five individuals examined locally.
Additionally, ten (10) of the twenty-five reported that they used emergency rooms for primary health care, (10 x $1,000.00 per visit = $10,000.00). Assuming that a third of the arrests for public inebriation required transportation to an emergency room (47 x $450.00 = $21,150.00) and a period of observation (47 x $1,000.00 = $47,000.00), the cost increases.
Thus, twenty-five individuals repeatedly cycling through jail, detox and hospitalization will incur costs of approximately $929,103.00 in one year.
These estimates are conservative. For example, they use an average of one emergency room visit with only one-third being transported by ambulance, without overnight hospitalization. Likewise, the cost of shelter is not is not included in this brief examination. Nonetheless, the fact that these 25 individuals consume approximately $929,103.00 in public service cost in just one year underscores the need to break the inefficient, costly cycle that presently characterizes the way our system addresses the issue of homelessness.