The Economic Consequences of Homelessness in The US

— Tod Lipka, Step Up On Second
Can mentally ill homeless people move on to jobs and live independently or will
they need to be subsidized forever?
For the chronically homeless in their 50s and 60s, stabilization in subsidized housing is
the most realistic outcome, Lipka said. “We could see less intensive, less costly
permanent supportive housing, but that’s difficult,” he said. “It’s either you’re in it or
you’re not.”
Homeless young adults with mental health issues do move on to school, jobs, and in
some cases, independent living.
“We have a building for transitional-age youth leaving foster care or state custody; they
have shorter tenancy, reunite with family, take computer classes and move out and live
on their own,” Lipka said.
Should the public pay for mentally ill homeless people to live near the beach
when most people can’t afford to?
Lipka said that Santa Monica, which subsidizes Step Up, recognized that its homeless
people are residents and that a vibrant city needs diversity.
Housing and support services cost less than we are spending now on police, courts,
jails and hospitals to manage homelessness, Lipka said. “Not to mention the nuisance
cost of homelessness to a community,” he said.
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Mental Illness and Homelessness
Tanya J. Peterson
Mental illness and homelessness can be interrelated. In "The Homeless Mentally Ill," an
article appearing in the Harvard Mental Health Letter (2005), the author asserts that
nearly a third of all homeless people in the U.S. have a serious mental illness like
schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or major depression. This means that of the estimated
600,000 homeless people in the U.S. in 2005, approximately 200,000 were seriously
mentally ill. The mentally ill homeless numbered nearly a quarter million people.
Homelessness and Mental Illness: Does One Cause the Other?
The association between mental illness and homelessness isn't quite a cause-andeffect
relationship. There are so many factors at work in both mental illness and
homelessness, not to mention the two of them together, to say that one unequivocally
causes the other.
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