A Choice: Jails or Homes
Bobby Watts, Executive Director
Shortly before heading to D.C. for the 50th
anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, I engaged in
an email exchange with the NYC Independent Budget Office. I was sure that a
figure in their recently-recently released report was incorrect. But it
wasn't a typo - the annualized cost of an inmate in NYC jails is $167,731 per
year.
A few months ago, inspired by a night sleeping out in the
park with the Interfaith Assembly on Housing and Homelessness, my letter in
this space focused on the importance of choices, anchored in a quote by
President Dwight Eisenhower which goes in part, “Every gun that is made, every warship
launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those
who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed… We pay for
a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people
…”
Shortly before heading to Washington, D.C. with several
CFH consumers and 100,000 other friends for the 50th anniversary of
the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, I engaged in an email exchange
with staff from the NYC Independent Budget Office. I was sure that a figure in their
recently-released report
was incorrect. But it wasn’t a typo - the
annualized cost of an inmate in NYC jails is $167,731 per year. On a given night, 70% of the
The human costs are that disease is not only
criminalized, but remains untreated, and becomes a driver of homelessness – not
only because some people do not receive the help they need to right their
lives, but because a drug felony will make someone ineligible for basic life
supports: food stamps, welfare, even the ability to live in public housing
projects.
To put our choices in perspective through other lenses: The cost to incarcerate someone in NYC jails
for a year dwarfs what drug treatment costs, what shelter costs, and certainly
what housing would cost. Under the
Advantage rental subsidy program for families leaving the shelter system, which
was discontinued for lack of funds, 23
families would have been housed for a year with this amount of money. Put another way, it is three times the cost
of putting someone through Harvard for a year.
Do we really feel that incarceration and causing
homelessness at this cost is the best choice we can make?
It certainly isn’t better for the individual, and it
isn’t better for society. According to The Blinker, NYC will spend over five
times more next year on housing drug offenders in jail, than it will on housing
low-income New Yorkers in NYCHA. The City will spend almost 50% more on housing drug offenders in jail than it will
on making NYC storm resistant next year. And the city will spend 50% more next
year housing drug offenders in jail than it will on CUNY.
If we feel we don’t have the money to address
homelessness, we only need to see what different choices we need to make. Deciding to no longer criminalize health
problems is an easy, moral, economical, and sensible choice to make.
Join the fight to end homelessness. Learn more at www.careforthehomeless.org.
