Huntsville

Housing for Huntsvillians | Episode 19

About This Episode

This week we cover some facts about Huntsville’s unhoused population and trends. And we discuss the actual cause of homelessness. Huntsville is home to an estimated 600 unhoused people. (This is almost certainly a massive undercount.) And this number is […]

This week we cover some facts about Huntsville’s unhoused population and trends. And we discuss the actual cause of homelessness.

Huntsville is home to an estimated 600 unhoused people. (This is almost certainly a massive undercount.)

And this number is rising.

Between Aug 2022-Aug 2023 affordable housing was the #1 request to the United Way 211 line, comprising 26% of calls. 64% of those callers were on the verge of homelessness when they called/

Cost of homelessness

Between various grants to nonprofits and the HHA budget, the City of Huntsville spends at least $1m/year fighting homelessness.

But that estimate doesn’t come close to the total cost of homelessness to taxpayers.

Various studies estimate that chronic homelessness costs taxpayers somewhere between $30,000 and $100,000 per person, per year.

But even that is an underestimate, because the costs are so diffuse that they’re impossible to accurately quantify.

These costs include, but are not limited to:

• Earlier death
• More infectious diseases
• Earlier, longer, and more frequent hospitalizations
• More frequent trips to emergency departments
• Higher rates of chronic and expensive-to-treat health conditions including high blood pressure, diabetes, and asthma
• Higher of mental illness and substance abuse and greater severity of symptoms