How Our Community Benefits

Permanent supportive housing makes ethical and financial sense for our community. Let's look at the numbers:

Currently there are an estimated 6,500 homeless in Charlotte, yet only 575 year-round shelter beds and 500 seasonal beds to serve this number. Our shelters were designed for temporary stays(30-90 days) but we have chronically homeless individuals living in shelters for years because they have no where else to go. Along with filling shelters, the chronically homeless are only 10-20% of the homeless population but they use an estimated 50% of the resources because their ongoing needs are so great. Resources and agencies designed to serve the situationally homeless are overburdened by and unable to meet needs of chronically homeless. This burden will continue to grow with the current economic condition.

With few shelter beds available, the chronically homeless often end up in jail for nonviolent offenses (trespassing, public urination) or in emergency rooms with pneumonia, foot infections or unchecked chronic diseases as a result of living on the streets. Both of these are much more expensive than housing and have no positive results for the homeless or our community.

A jail cell costs $110 per night in Charlotte and the average emergency room visit is $1024. Permanent Supportive Housing costs about $29 per night and both the homeless individual and the community receive positive outcomes.Ten-Year Plan calls for 500 units of Permanent Supportive Housing for the chronically homeless by 2016.

By developing Moore Place for the chronically homeless, the Urban Ministry Center intends to:

Reduce the number of homeless men and women who die on or streets each year (more than 30 people died in 2008)
Create the only housing option for currently homeless women
Create cost efficiencies and shelter space throughout our homeless services network
Reduce the use of emergency rooms and jail cells as shelter