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DETROIT, MI — Except for when I was rehabbing from breaking my right leg, twice, and when I traded my indifferent housekeeping for room and board (otherwise known as being a “stay at home mom”) I have worked continuously in allied health care since 1984. In those thirty-one years I have never seen any patients who lost body parts due to frostbite—until now.
This February, the coldest on record in 140 years, not one, but two patients who had to have both feet amputated due to frostbite were admitted where I work.
Alarmed by this, I called Mayor Duggan’s office. They reassured me that “Respite Centers” were available to keep people out of the cold. A respite center is more commonly referred to as a warming center and this means that there is a place for people to warm up while sitting on a chair. No bed. A chair.
Michigan saw a 6.1 % increase in the homeless population last year, whereas nationwide the numbers declined 2.6%. Currently, there are an estimated 20,000 homeless people in Detroit. There are only 1900 beds in homeless shelters in Detroit. Fifty percent of the homeless people are suffering from mental illness. Sixty percent are families with children. Only Cass Community Social Services and a Westland shelter have facilities that allow for boys between 12 -17 to stay with their mothers and other siblings. All other shelters in Detroit require that boys thirteen and up have to be housed with the adult men! So a homeless male teen has a good chance of being housed with adult men who are suffering from mental illness rather than with his family
The problem can only get worse in the current political climate. Corporate Welfare grows, but the safety net is shredded. Marathon got a huge tax break but failed to come through with the promised jobs for Detroiters. Lansing is considering bills to deny welfare to folks testing positive for drugs despite the dismal failure of such programs in other states. In Florida, drug testing welfare recipients only served to pad the governor’s pockets due to his ownership of the testing lab.
What is the solution? We are learning what should have been obvious: Housing First. If people are given a place to live, they are no longer homeless! Expecting people to fix what got them there first results in failure. Requiring a person to kick a drug, alcohol, or joblessness problem without the basics of a place to sleep, eat, bathe and wash clothes seems almost ludicrous. It costs thousands of dollars to rehabilitate someone who has lost both feet to frostbite. Even if money is the ONLY object, it is obvious we’re doing it wrong. We could have given these people each a HOUSE for far less than their rehabilitation and lifetime disabilities will now cost our society. We are literally cutting off people’s feet to spite ourselves by our moralistic approach to homelessness!
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When you are mentally ill you are lucky to live on $3 a day or $630, a month. That is what the poor of third world nations live on. Only items cost a lot more in the USA than in Africa, or even in the 2nd world nation, of Italy.
Some mentally are not on disability, or cannot prove they are mentally ill, so do not qualify for the few reduced services. They survive on next to nothing.
It cost society MORE not to house them, then it would cost to show compassion. One western state has proclaimed it has ended what they claim to be 80% of homelessness by doing housing first. We all can. It will save money on hospitalization, Jailing, the homeless, etc. We often forget Children are without shelter also.
The reason mentally ill are homeless is, lack of money. Uath found it cost less to provide housing, then for people to give up hope. I now live in a state which in some cities breaks the US and state Constitution to jail the homeless. one moth of jail means taxpayers spends enough to house them for nearly a year. – Jan Lightfoot