Photo Credit: Liz Lance - Salt Achieves
Chronic homelessness is defined as either long-term or repeated homelessness among individuals accompanied by a disability. Many chronically homeless people have a serious mental illness like schizophrenia and/or a substance use history. Research reveals that between 10 to 20 percent of homeless single adults are chronically homeless. This translates into between 150,000 to 200,000 people who are chronically homelessness. Permanent supportive housing—housing linked with supportive services—is an effective strategy for ending chronic homelessness and it is the most cost effective.
Core Assumptions for Ending Chronic Homelessness
1. Supportive housing is the central solution to chronic homelessness: at least 150,000 units of permanent supportive housing are needed nationally for people who are experiencing chronic homelessness.
2. Chronically homeless individuals have needs that often result in the greatest costs because of frequent, and inefficient use of public systems (such as shelters, hospitals, treatment facilities, and jails).
3. We must end the practice of discharging people into homelessness from hospitals, mental health and chemical dependency treatment facilities, jails, and prisons.
4. We must secure investments in additional affordable and supportive housing alternatives from mainstream systems, so that supportive housing is available to those who are homeless, or would likely be homeless without it.
No comments:
Post a Comment