By MARISA LORANGER, Staff Reporter.
How to deal with homelessness in America has become a frequent topic of discussion in recent months. Cities are putting arms in the middle of benches, creating laws against loitering and sleeping in cars, and installing anti-homeless spikes. There seems to be a trend that the homeless shouldn’t be seen or heard.
Clayton Shell, a Delta College student, once found himself in the position of being homeless. He spent his nights at friends’ homes, abandoned houses, train cars, hospital bathrooms, under bridges and on park benches.
“Too many people are homeless in Saginaw,” explained Shell.
Shell was kicked out of school and lost his job due to drugs. While homeless he would steal to pay for his drug habit. He went to prison for 20 months and then entered a halfway house, got a job, went to school and now lives with his girlfriend.
In Michigan, there hasn’t been much of an effort to combat homelessness. There are 86,189 homeless people in Michigan according to campaigntoendhomelessness.org. “Michigan is ranked 5th in the US and 1st in Midwest for number of homeless residents per capita,” says US Department of Housing and Urban Development Annual Homeless Assessment, 2008.
Some states such as California, Utah, Colorado and North Carolina are trying to change that with initiatives to combat homelessness. There seems to be a common consensus from these states that giving homes to the homeless is actually cheaper than leaving them on the street.
In Los Angeles, Cali. they’re working to combat homelessness with Project 50, an organization that is helping house their homeless population. The Los Angeles Times explained that L.A. spent $3.045 million to implement Project 50. By lowering medical costs and incarceration rates, the city saved $3.284 million.
At the University of Southern California they found that for every year a homeless person was in a stable home the costs to the city fell more than $20,000 per person. According to the Los Angeles Times, the city gained $238,700 the first year the project was enacted.
The cost of people being homeless is expensive when you take into consideration hospital bills, police intervention and jail time that taxpayers have to cover. On cold nights the homeless will enter a hospital to survive the night. When the homeless get hungry, they may commit a petty crime so they can have a roof over their head and food through the prison system.
“I’ve seen people commit petty crimes to get locked up for the winter, I see it all the time,” said Shell.
People in these situations are often stuck and don’t know how to find a way out.
“These aren’t educated people and they don’t know how to get help, some have severe mental disorders,” said Shell.
People don’t have the assets or opportunities to get to where they need. Shelters and soup kitchens are sometimes across town, making it an impossible journey for those who are homeless to be somewhere safe.
Housing the homeless may be a solution to creating safer cities with less people on the streets and less frivoulous spending.
Although Shell is no longer homeless he believes his situation could have been prevented if there had been “someone to give me a job, someone to give me a chance, that could have saved me.”