Public Service Alliance of Canada BC

In 2001, the B.C. Ministry of Social Housing released a document reviewing the research on the relationship between homelessness and the health,social services, and criminal justice systems and estimated the cost of homelessness to governments …

Executive Summary

Some observers argue that homelessness costs the health care, social services and criminal justice systems at least as much as decent affordable housing. In fact, as one observer noted: “we continue paying to put the homeless in hospital beds, while not providing them with ordinary beds of their own,” (Starr 1998). The question is do we pay now by providing those ordinary beds or do we pay possibly more later by not providing them? The costs of dealing with the consequences of homelessness, such as increased health needs, must be weighed against the cost of investing in longer-term housing solutions. This research provides a preliminary estimate of the costs of homelessness to the British Columbia government.

The specific objectives for this exploratory research are:

• To present a cost analysis of homelessness in terms of the British Columbia health care, social services and criminal justice systems.
• To analyse whether the provision of adequate and affordable housing is a preventive cost to the government.

Conclusions and Recommendations

The prevention approach to homelessness has proved to be more cost-effective than the emergency or reactive approach for this small sample of individuals. Focusing on preventing the use of costly government funded health care, criminal justice and social services through the provision of supportive housing for homeless people makes good sense from a financial perspective. This approach also has the benefit of improving the quality of life and well-being of homeless people. The interviews and service records suggest that in most cases, housing had a positive impact on these people’s lives.

The entire study is available at housing.gov.bc.ca.