Win analysis that uses most comprehensive accounting of the costs of homelessness, projects over $730 million in annual savings to City

City Hall, NY – After the City Council passed a package of legislation improving accessibility and removing barriers to the CityFHEPS voucher program, cost estimates that better accounted for the full range of savings of preventing homelessness were released by major public policy organizations, including the city’s largest family shelter provider. Women in Need (WIN), the largest provider of shelter and supportive housing for homeless families, and the Community Service Society of New York (CSSNY) released reports estimating the costs and financial savings to the City of implementing the Council’s CityFHEPS reforms.

WIN’s analysis, released in July, takes the most comprehensive view of the costs of homelessness, and thus the savings of keeping individuals and families housed instead of experiencing homelessness and entering the shelter system. By taking into consideration the annual money spent in medical care, juvenile detention, education, foster care and shelter costs alongside the same number of households as CSS’s preceding report, WIN finds the City could achieve annual savings of $730 million given the estimated costs of the current system and potential reform of CityFHEPS.

CSSNY’s report, released in June, uses the number of households with incomes below 50 percent of the Area Median Income that are severely rent-burdened as its basis and found that the net additional increase in cost for using CityFHEPS as an eviction-prevention tool is $3 billion cumulatively over five years, or approximately $600 million per year. Their net projection includes the cost of using city vouchers to keep people housed in their homes while solely accounting for shelter and rehousing costs under the system as it exists today.

###