11/02/2026
What are our Brown County numbers? Our Wisconsin statistics? Overburdening emergency services, government/police departments, and charitable resources will always be more expensive than to provide basic housing first. Humanity first.
Leaving people on the street is not the cheap option, it's just the option that sends the bill to a different department.
The emergency room absorbs it, the county jail absorbs it, the ambulance service absorbs it.
A 2014 study for the Central Florida Commission on Homelessness found chronically homeless people in the region cost the public about $31,065 a year per person.
Permanent supportive housing for the same people would have cost about $10,051.
That gap is the whole case for putting a roof over someone first and sorting out the rest after.
Officials who choose sweeps and jail cells over leases aren't saving taxpayers anything.
They're spending three times as much to look tough.
