Baltimore – like most cities these days – has a math problem. The supply of emergency services is simply insufficient to meet the demand for those in need of them.
At least 4,000 men, women, and children without a place to stay tonight will compete for roughly 2,000 shelter beds. Never been much of a math whiz, but even I can calculate that one.
This same imbalance exists across an array of services our friends and neighbors require to meet basic needs for themselves and their families: food, health care, addiction treatment, rental assistance to prevent evictions and foreclosures. In each and every case, the demand for resources completely overwhelms the supply, leading to . . .
Another math problem: people who don’t have their needs met through relatively low-cost emergency services often wind up using far costlier resources in emergency rooms and hospitals or back in jail or prison.
Since the creation of Health Care for the Homeless 26 years ago, we’ve noticed a phenomenon that further complicates both equations. Every morning, the line of people requesting services outside our clinic includes individuals who have been released from jail or prison during the night with nowhere to turn. Conversely, detention facilities in Baltimore are filled increasingly with individuals living their private lives in very public spaces – men and women arrested for loitering, trespassing, exhibiting signs of a mental illness, or, well, to put it bluntly, having no place else to pee.
We are pleased to release today a new report exploring the relationships among homelessness, incarceration, and re-entry back into the Baltimore community. Student interns, HCH staff, and dozens of people who have themselves experienced homelessness and incarceration spent long hours this past summer listening to more than 400 men and women who had been released from incarceration within the past ten years. Their experiences and perspective guided the research.
The results are striking. Two thirds were released between the hours of 8:00pm and 5:00am when most supportive services are closed. Most of those surveyed listed “housing” and “employment” among the factors that may have prevented their incarceration. And respondents who first entered the corrections system in their youth were more likely to spend ten years or more behind bars over the course of a lifetime.
We can and must use public dollars differently. May this report and the important work to follow guide us all toward sensible and cost-effective solutions that actually add up.
Click here to learn more and download a copy of the report.
Kevin Lindamood, President & CEO
Health Care for the Homeless
Twitter: @KevinLindamood
