The Most Effective Homeless Organizations You've Never Heard Of
...99 days to go...
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the experience of volunteering in a Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH) facility.
These organizations can be incredibly helpful in preventing homelessness, and yet I had barely heard of them before starting A Handful of Coins.
They mostly don’t ask for volunteers, because helping requires a fair amount of specialized training. They mostly don’t ask for money or host fundraising galas, because most of their funding comes from government grants for housing projects. As a result, they simply aren’t “out there” marketing themselves to the community.
And yet… in a certain light, they are really a lot more cost-effective than other forms of support for homelessness, like emergency shelters.
The Cost Comparison: PSH vs. Emergency Shelters
The organization I’m working with, Plymouth Healing Communities (PHC), houses about 30 people on a budget of about $1 million annually.
That works out to about $33,000 per person annually. Since residents contribute 30% of their income toward rent (often from disability checks), the organization needs about $25,000 per person in external funding - roughly the cost of renting a modest Seattle apartment.
But when you compare that cost to the alternatives, it starts to look like a real bargain.
Emergency shelter: Providing emergency shelter typically costs closer to $150 per bed, per night. This works out to ~$55K annually per person, per year - over twice the cost of permanent supportive housing. The additional cost isn’t waste: it’s necessary to provide the supervision and wraparound services needed in a shelter environment. But those extra services wouldn’t be needed if the residents weren’t homeless. PSH doesn’t require 24/7 on-site staff, since residents live independently in their own apartments with periodic check-ins from case managers. PSH doesn’t require commercial kitchens, security systems, or intake processes. There are no shelter curfews, bed assignments, or shared spaces requiring staff time. And there is no need for expensive on-site mental health treatment, since PSH residents can connect with much more efficient existing community mental health services.
Emergency rooms: A single ER visit for a mental health crisis costs $3,000-5,000. Without permanent supportive housing, many of these individuals would have multiple visits per year.
Jail: The average cost to incarcerate someone in King County exceeds $50,000 per year. People with untreated mental illness are vastly overrepresented in our jails.
High Leverage Philanthropy
One of the things I’ve loved about this year is identifying opportunities to help that have high leverage—interventions that cost less and accomplish more.
Plymouth Healing Communities is exactly that kind of opportunity.
This month, Jen and I are giving to Plymouth—enough to provide one person with permanent supportive housing for half of a year. The way we see it, it’s worth twice the amount of money spent on emergency shelter, while simultaneously giving people the opportunity to stay out of emergency rooms or jail and avoid the immeasurable trauma of living on the streets with mental illness. Our hope is that we’re giving someone a realistic chance at managing their condition.
Finding These Organizations
If you’re looking for cost-effective ways to address homelessness, seek out PSH programs in your community. They won’t find you—you’ll have to find them.
Look for organizations that:
Provide permanent (not transitional) housing
Serve people with serious mental illness or disabilities
Operate on relatively modest budgets despite housing dozens of people
Get most of their funding from government grants rather than individual donors
These are the organizations quietly doing the work that actually keeps people housed. They deserve more support than they’re getting.