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President’s Column from the Winter 2010 NTSPP Newsletter*

            The city of Seattle saved $4 million in hospital, jail and other public services after 95 homeless people moved into one housing project. These 95 people’s visits to hospitals and jails before had cost tax-payers nearly $8.2 million. Other facts concerning the wisdom of providing permanent supportive housing for the chronically homeless can be found in Kim Horner’s Dallas Morning News article of Sunday December 13, 2009. This article focuses on Dallas’s empty Plaza Hotel which a developer has been attempting to make available for permanent supportive housing. The state rejected this developer’s application for tax credits in March 2009, most likely because of neighborhood opposition. As a result, the twelve-story Plaza building remains empty and thousands of people in Dallas remain on the streets or in jail or emergency rooms, incurring costs of tens of millions of dollars, not to mention the human misery. Continue reading NTSPP President Ed Nace MD on Mental Health Services in North Texas