The Center for Mental Health Services Housing Initiative has produced cost estimates of housing for supported housing and comparison housing at each of six sites involved in the cross-site study. The goal of the Steering Committee Cost Subcommittee was to estimate the costs of running housing programs, in order to be useful to housing program planners. These costs include housing costs and the costs of supportive services.
Because program sites differ with respect to types of services bundled with housing, it is not useful to compare the housing program costs alone. These costs must be considered in the context of the types of services included in each program. Thus, the cost subcommittee sought to develop costs for each site, and then to offer descriptive information about comprehensiveness of services that can be used to understand differences in costs between sites.
The cost subcommittee was also faced with the problem of differing availability of cost and service utilization data. For example, some sites record service utilization specific to their programs in management information systems. Without such information, one site collected comprehensive service utilization records for each study participant from each provider. Another conducted a sub-study of costs and effort for each participating agency offering supportive services. Therefore, each site employed an approach to development of program
Learning Objectives: At the conclusion of the session, the participant will be able to: 1. Discuss the design and development of a cross-site cost study of housing approaches for persons with seriuos mental illness. 2. Describe the variations in cost in operating various types of housing approaches for persons with serious mental illness in various communities across the country.
Keywords: Mental Illness, Housing
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