A: “We all are.”
Check out WATE’s story on the cost of emergency medical transportation, and its heavy utilization by people who are homeless. Since April of this year, as of air time for this story, ambulances responded to 523 emergency calls from the 400 block of Broadway, where many people who are homeless seek shelter, food, and other services.
The story points out that Knox County spends over half a million dollars a year just to transport indigent people to the hospital, not inclusive of the care they receive once they arrive.
People who are chronically homeless are by far the heaviest consumers of emergency medical services like ambulance services. For a more complete look at the costs associated with letting a person who is chronically homeless continue to live on the streets, look at this study. It’s as brief as it is shocking.
And as Mike Dunthorn points out, we’re all paying the bills accrued by people who don’t have housing. We know that those costs go down when we help people off the streets and into a safe, secure, permanent home, and provide them with professional case management services. It is only then that they can really begin to effectively address the issues that led to their homelessness in the first place.
This approach is called Housing First. It provides a safe, secure environment for the most vulnerable people on the streets. It reduces costs to the community. It is humane, and it works. That’s why the Ten-Year Plan is such a strong advocate for this approach.