It’s costly, but a ‘heck of a lot cheaper than letting someone stay unsheltered’.
A new 13-acre property purchased by Sacramento County will soon be home to the Watt Service Center and Safe Stay. The county broke ground on the mixed-use service center this week, which will provide shelter, emergency respite, safe parking, health services, and more to community members who don’t have a place to safely sleep at night.
The Watt Service Center will have amenities to help meet the needs of anyone staying there, including bathrooms, showers, laundry, and food, as well as mental health, treatment, and employment services. The center will have the capacity to host 350 people at any given time.
While it might appear to be an expensive establishment, the city says that it is ultimately much less expensive than allowing the homelessness crisis to go unmitigated. The land was purchased for $22 million and will cost an estimated $42 million to construct the center - mostly funded by the American Rescue Plan Act, reports ABC10.
Sacramento County says that the average cost for an “unsheltered individual” is about $45,000 a year, considering public systems like county jail, shelters, behavioral health, and more. With the projected impact of the shelter, that cost lowers to less than $3,600 per person.
“If you break down the funding, it’s actually not that expensive,” a supervisor told ABC10.
“It’s a heck of a lot cheaper than letting someone stay out in the community, unsheltered where they are extremely expensive in terms of the emergency response from fire, our emergency rooms, our law enforcement response.”