and make city projects safe enough so that mentally-ill-but-stable
people on ssi can
move into them (some physically frail as well), and also maybe into some
of the projects meant for elderly-only, with full support services, or
fund via nonprofits more buildings like goodwill terrace and roosevelt
island, only screening for criminality and drug use when indicated.
forward follows:---------------->>

http://www.***.com/

ABC News - Health & Living June 10, 1998

NYC HOMELESS STUDIED
HOSPITAL, HOUSING COSTS COMPARABLE

The hospital stay study found the
average cost of additional days per
discharge nearly equaled the
annual public-assistance rent
allowance for a single person.

June 10 - It costs about as much to treat the
homeless as it does to house them, a study in
Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine
reports.
Researchers examined New York City's homeless
and how they sought medical treatment from the public
hospital system. They found that the homeless were
more likely to be admitted, and once there, tended to stay
longer than other patients.
The result was hospital expenses comparable to what
it would cost to provide public housing and support
services for the homeless.
The conclusions by Sharon Salit of the New York
City Health and Hospitals Corp. and her colleagues are
based on the records from almost 19,000 hospital
admissions involving homeless people seeking treatment
in 1992 and 1993.
Their findings are being released at a time when the
city is trying to save money by privatizing the public
hospitals that care for the homeless when they fall ill.

Homeless Stay Longer

Salit and her team found that homeless patients stayed in
the hospital 36 percent longer than other patients, partly
because doctors often had nowhere safe to send them,
especially when they also suffered from mental illness.
"The average cost of additional days per discharge
($2,414) among the homeless nearly equaled the annual
public-assistance rent allowance for a single person in
New York City ($2,580)," they concluded.
Most of the extra costs came from people with
psychiatric disorders.
"Better access to supportive housing for these patients
could reduce hospital stays by as many as 70 days" a
person, they said. That would save at least $17,500,
"whereas a unit of supportive housing with social
services for an entire year costs $12,500 in New York
City."
"We continue paying to put the homeless in hospital
beds while not providing them with ordinary beds of
their own," said Dr. Paul Starr of Princeton University
in an editorial in the Journal.
But Starr acknowledged that the problem of
homelessness lacked "a cheap and obvious solution."
He said that "subsidized housing for all these people
would sharply reduce homelessness, but it would be
very expensive."
The lack of affordable public housing, the move to
raise housing standards to make it harder for people to
crowd together, plus society's decision to empty mental
hospitals without paying for community services for the
mentally ill combined to create the problem, Starr said.

END FORWARD
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the included
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