I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that Munson didn’t include the homeless shelter in the 2010 budget;
“This is a huge decision to go it alone,” County Commissioner Carol Twedt said. “We were always under the hope we would have a partner in the city. But we don’t, so we are going to be brave and do the right thing.”
I would support the city’s inaction if 1) The city and county weren’t saving $400,000 a year in emergency services by having this program 2) the city wasn’t spending money on silly ‘Quality of Life’ projects that we don’t need. It seems Munson ducked controversy once again just by doing NOTHING. Pathetic.
Many do not remember that it was the Munson administration who ran the salvation army out of town when they were scouting to build a free homeless shelter. If his developer buddys can’t build it and soak the taxpayer, he’ll not let it happen. Fortunately, the county is more humane. I’d rather see them build. There’s all likelihood it could get done on time and for half price. I just wish citizens could direct tax revenue away from city corruption into county services.
Even if you hate homeless drunks, this makes economic sense. Saving taxpayer’s $400,000 a year in emergency services is money well spent. I do agree with Staggers though when we need to look for federal money from the VA since a lot of these guys are vets, but that doesn’t mean the city should not pony up.
The next time someone comes up to me and says Dave Munson is a ‘Nice Guy’ I am going to reply, “Really? He doesn’t give a fuck about the homeless. What a nice guy.”
I’m just not sure I can be convinced we would actually “save” $400,000 a year. I think there is a huge risk of snowballing costs due to the perception we are enabling homelessness by rewarding the behavior.
I’m all for addressing the homeless situation, but focusing upon those who are most likely to abuse the healthcare system might not be the real answer.
Besides, anytime someone tells me government can save money by spending more money I get a little apprehensive. It just all reminds me of a window salesman who tells you a $12,000 investment could save you up to 40% of your energy costs. Of course if you only pay $800 a year to heat your home, it would take you 38 years to recoup the original investment… and that is assuming 0% interest on your initial $12k.
“It just all reminds me of a window salesman who tells you a $12,000 investment could save you up to 40% of your energy costs.”
You mean like the $700,000 historically correct windows on the Pavilion that could have been fixed with weather stripping.
Whether you agree or not with helping these people does not matter. They will continue to abuse the system. We might as well just give them free services up front at a cheaper rate instead of more expensive in the long run.
You’re either missing my point or I’m doing a bad job at articulating it.
If we knew the number of people abusing the system would remain constant, then it is a no-brainer to build the shelter to save $400k a year.
My point is if you do build such a shelter to address those who abuse the system, there will simply be an influx of those who realize if they abuse the system they will receive preferential treatment at the new center as well. Before you know it, the number of people gaming the system has gone up tenfold and you are spending more than ever before to put a band-aid on the problem.
I don’t claim to have the answers and I don’t think this is an issue that can be addressed with a single solution, but I’d prefer to spend more resources on the source of the problem (ie why these people are homeless to begin with) rather than treating the symptom and ignoring the disease.
Costner-
These are the worst of the worst. You can’t just go on a bender one night and they give you a free apartment. They are chronic and costing taxpayers thousands of dollars in emergency services. There is a screening process. You have to be a repeat, repeat, repeat offender. I don’t always agree with Litz, but I think he said it best in a meeting (paraphrasing) “I suppose we could do nothing and pull one these guys dead out of the river some cold winter night, but I don’t want to put in that position.”
I can understand your frustration, but you are also not seeing the whole story.
Trust me, if a homeless person realizes all they have to do is start abusing the system and get themselves admitted to the ER 10, 20, or 50 times in a year… it won’t be long before they do so.
It doesn’t matter what threshold we set, it will be found and surpassed by those who see how the worst of the worst are treated better than the rest.
So if this is such a slam-dunk to save $400k a year, surely it must have been implemented in other cities. It shouldn’t be that difficult to pull some legitimate before and after figures to see what the true long-term costs and/or savings really are.
Call me crazy, but anytime the city tells me they can save X amount of money by spending Y, I tend to be skeptical. I’m not sure you have noticed, but the before and after rarely seems to match with our fiscally retarded city leaders.
You obviously don’t know enough about this issue to be commenting on it.
– It has worked in other cities. Seattle has saved millions
– And since SF has implemented the program two years ago they have estimated saving more then $400,000.
Costner, the hard numbers are there. Every city that has implemented the program has saved money, none have lost. It just makes economic sense.
I still say there is room for abuse regardless of how one reads the numbers. Figures can be manipulated to fulfill an agenda, and in the proper context I can easily see how the program would be successful.
For instance if it costs $1,000,000 to care for the 20 worst offenders of the system using today’s methods, but only would cost $600,000 to care for those same 20 people with the “new” program, then one could say it saves $400,000. However if implemenation of that program spurs another 15 people to start purposefully abusing the system in hopes they too will be included in the new program and be offered better housing and healthcare, those costs aren’t likely to be factored in because those pushing the program would considering them unrelated costs.
So the program might be successful when looking at those specific worse case individuals, but when looking at the broad picture it isn’t quite as clear.
As much as I like to pick on our city, county, state, and federal government for being inefficient – it is highly unlikely they wouldn’t implement a program if they knew for certain the payback period is so small in comparison. Politicians love to put their name on programs that save money, and even moreso when they can pretend they care about problems like homelessness, but I’m as equally certain if it was so black and white it would have been put into motion long ago.
Clearly there is a debate here, and that tells me there is more to the story than what we can glean from reading the Argus or listening to the city council meetings.