Building Housing For Homeless People Saves L.A. County Money, Study Shows

An ambitious program to provide permanent housing to some of Los Angeles County's most hard-core homeless has more than paid for itself, yielding a net savings of $238,700 over two years, it was reported today.

That is equivalent to $4,774 for each apartment provided under Project 50, according to a report that will be presented at a meeting later today of the Los Angeles County Interdepartmental Council on Homelessness, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Project 50, championed by Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, began in late 2007 with the goal of finding and housing the 50 most vulnerable, long-term homeless living on the streets of skid row in downtown Los Angeles. Since then, the number of participants has grown to 133, of whom 94 remain housed, seven are incarcerated, 12 have died and 20 left the program, The Times reported.

Yaroslavsky of 's Palo Verde apartments in Sun Valley last year, the agency’s first permanent supportive housing project for low-income, formerly or chronically homeless adults and those living with mental illness. (See attached video.)

The findings support a growing consensus across the country that getting the most entrenched street dwellers into permanent homes and providing them the services they need to stay off the streets can save municipalities money, according to the newspaper.

More than 51,000 people are homeless on any given night in the county, according to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. About a quarter of them are considered chronically homeless and suffer from a serious physical, mental or substance abuse problem. See more:

Project 50 has been controversial because it did not require that people get sober before they were housed. But advocates of the so-called housing- first approach say a permanent roof provides the stability chronically homeless people need to get their lives back on track, The Times reported.

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