Solution For Homeless Veterans
The “Housing First” program is an approach to ending homelessness, developed in New York City, where instead of putting the homeless into shelters, they are immediately put into permanent housing as quickly as possible with voluntary support service provided to them. The housing first allows people to easily be placed in a house despite mental illnesses which has been known to bar the people who need help the most from receiving it, “people experiencing homelessness are provided with permanent housing directly and with few to no treatment preconditions, behavioral contingencies, or barriers.” (endhomelessness.org). This has proven to help both those who are homeless due to a sudden crisis and those who are prone to chronic homelessness due to mental illness, by giving them a second chance with a home, which is just the push they need to improve their lives.
It may sound like an expensive solution, but it has also been proven to be a less costly way to end homelessness, since instead of taxpayer money being spent on medical services on the homeless who are vulnerable to sickness and injury. According to a 2006 cost study on the “The Denver Housing First Collaborative” written by, Jennifer Perlman and John Parvensky, a significant reduction in the use and cost of emergency services by program participants as well as increased health status was witnessed during Denver’s implementation of housing