What does our community spend each year to support a chronically homeless person?
Dr. Roger Nooe, Professor Emeritus in the University of Tennessee College of Social Work, and Knoxville’s leading expert on the study of homelessness, recently tracked 25 chronically homeless people over the course of approximately one year. Dr. Nooe’s study concluded that these 25 people, cycling repeatedly through jail, alcohol & drug treatment, and hospital usage, would incur costs of approximately $929,000. That’s an average of approximately $37,000 each. That conservative estimate does not include the costs associated with food and shelter; if you factor the cost of food and shelter back into the equation, Knoxville’s average costs per person may actually exceed national averages.
