Once chronically homeless, Steven Davis is looking at his third winter in an apartment provided by a federally funded program designed to get people off the streets.
If not for the government-paid Housing First home and health care, Davis, 41, said he surely would be in detox or worse.
“The only time I ever slept inside was when I was in detox or in jail,” said Davis, a three-year member of Housing First in Denver. “I haven’t been to either since I started here.”
He is among 150 homeless people who benefit from Housing First, an effort that in its first two years has saved Denver taxpayers more than $4.7 million in emergency care services, according to a new report.
Those services – emergency room treatment, detox center admission and hospital visits – are among the most abused by the homeless. That is because, studies have shown, those services are the only medical care available to the homeless.
Yet, Housing First residents used fewer taxpayer-funded services in the first two years they were in the program than they had used in the two years prior, according to a study released Monday by the Denver Housing First Collaborative. The group is a consortium of six local agencies working to end homelessness.
The study looked at four years of hospital, police and health records for 19 program participants and determined that each, on average, cost taxpayers $43,239 in emergency services in the two years before they entered Housing First and $11,694 in the two years after they were in the program – a 73 percent drop.
The biggest savings came from fewer detox admissions, which in practical terms, “costs more for one night than I pay for my monthly rent,” Davis said. One night at Denver C.A.R.E.S. detox costs $295.
The study found program participants on average spent less time in detox at a savings of $8,700 for each.
“There was a lot of skepticism and criticism of this program when it began, (but) it’s proven it is successful,” said Roxane White, director of Denver’s Department of Human Services. The department oversees Denver’s Road Home, the city’s 10-year plan to end homelessness.
But progress made by the federal Housing First Initiative, the $50 million program that launched three years ago in Denver and 10 other cities, could be in danger because the seed money that paid for services to treat the homeless dries up at the end of January. Denver’s share was $3.4 million.
“We continue to seek funding and hope the community and government grants will help us bridge the gap,” said John Parvensky, president of the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless.
Staff writer David Migoya can be reached at 303-954-1506 or dmigoya@denverpost.com.
