There has been a lot of national news this week about the cost of arresting and jailing the homeless in Osceola County(see new story from today below). Here are a few things we at the Rethink Homelessness Campaign want you to know about these reports and this data: 1.) The homeless in this report are chronically homeless and almost all are disabled. This is important because their disability makes them unable to provide the resources to afford a home of their own. In other words without help they cannot logically find a way to get off the streets. 2.) This cycle of homelessness, arrest, and release back to the streets is unfortunately the norm, not the exception for most cities in America. Any city in America with a large amount of chronically homeless people who have no housing option for them ends up SPENDING MILLIONS OF DOLLARS EACH YEAR on this problem. Osceola County actually has a very SMALL problem compared to other cities in Florida and most big cities in America. The numbers are $cary. 3.) Law enforcement, in my opinion, gets a bad rap when dealing with the long term homeless. At the end of day without a community housing solution for these disabled homeless individuals law enforcement is almost completely helpless in dealing with the problem. Dont blame the police for the problem; they are just facing the results of cities that have not figured out how to solve this problem. 4.) There is no solution to help most of these long term homeless in this report other than Supportive Housing. When communities begin investing in housing options, with services, for these long term homeless they start to see results. And as this report accurately depicts the financial cost of inaction is millions of dollars per year. Andrae Bailey-Rethink Homelessness Campaign
Posted on: Sat, 08 Feb 2014 22:28:46 +0000
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