this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2023
150 points (96.9% liked)

Canada

7106 readers
277 users here now

What's going on Canada?

Communities

🍁 Meta

πŸ—ΊοΈ Provinces / Territories

πŸ™οΈ Cities / Regions

πŸ’ SportsHockey

Football (NFL)

  • List of All Teams: unknown

Football (CFL)

  • List of All Teams: unknown

Baseball

Basketball

Soccer

πŸ’» Universities

πŸ’΅ Finance / Shopping

πŸ—£οΈ Politics

🍁 Social & Culture

Rules

Reminder that the rules for lemmy.ca also apply here. See the sidebar on the homepage:

https://lemmy.ca

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
150
A B.C. study gave 50 homeless people $7,500 each. Here's what they spent it on. (bc.ctvnews.ca)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
33 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

No reason not to do this across the board

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Those who got the payment did not spend more money on "temptation goods," spent 99 fewer days homeless, increased their savings and spent less time in shelters which "saved society" $777 per person, according to a news release from UBC.

Is that gross or net savings? That is, is the $7500 included and there was a net savings, or was there a net cost of $6723?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

Seems to be net savings, quoting someone else :

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2222103120

The societal cost of a shelter stay in Vancouver is estimated at $93 per night (6), so fewer nights in shelters generated a societal cost savings of $8,277. After accounting for the cost of the cash transfer, the reduced shelter use led to societal net savings of $777 per person a year.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

From the linked study:

generated societal net savings of $777 per recipient via reduced time in shelter

So giving them $7500 reduced shelter costs by $8277. I would guess the total "societal cost" reduction is even higher, due to the harder to calculate indirect costs; but those are difficult to validate.

Also, there's 99 shelter days saved per person, $777 for that period would be incredible. If you've got a secret to run a shelter for < $8/bed/day, you're going to solve homelessness and the housing shortage.