It would be cheaper to provide actual housing and support for BC’s homeless than it is to provide existing non-housing services to the same people:

A new study says providing shelter for the homeless with severe addictions and mental illness throughout British Columbia could save taxpayers millions of dollars.

“Addiction is the most prevalent mental health problem in both the street homeless and at-risk populations, followed by concurrent disorders and, less frequently, mental illness alone,” the Simon Fraser University report says.

The paper — titled Housing and Support for Adults with Severe Addictions and/or Mental Illnesses in British Columbia [warning: 15-page PDF] — says providing non-housing services for such people currently costs the public system more than $55,000 per year per person. It says providing adequate housing and supports could reduce this cost to $37,000 per year….

“The costs of providing supported housing and other health services to this population … is lower than the cost incurred through the use of emergency departments, the corrections system and emergency shelters when they are homeless,” the report says.

(Hat tip: David Eby. If you are at all interested in poverty, homelessness, or the social impact of the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver — and if you live here, you ought to be — I strongly recommend reading Eby’s blog. He works with the Pivot Legal Society, a non-profit that provides legal assistance to people in the Downtown Eastside.)

So about an hour ago, I was waiting for a bus on Robson Street in downtown Vancouver, on my way home from dinner with some friends. A cop car drove by, then turned around in the nearest alley and pulled up to the curb maybe ten feet down from the bus stop. There was a homeless guy sitting outside the 7-11 there, quietly asking for change; the cop in the passenger seat rolled down his window and called the homeless guy over.

Being a civil libertarian, I watched the conversation with interest. (I didn’t get too close, though — those guys are dangerous.)

After exchanging a few words, the cops handed the guy a piece of paper and told him to get lost. He grabbed his backpack and stormed off angrily down Granville Street. I caught up to him afterwards and asked him if they had given him a ticket, and indeed they had. BC has a law which, among other things, prohibits panhandlers from asking for change within 5 metres of a bank machine. There was an ATM inside the 7-11, and even though the homeless guy was more than 5 metres away from it, he was close enough for Vancouver’s finest.

The penalty? A $115 fine. Which, if you’re sitting on the street asking for money, is obviously way more than you can afford.

Naturally the cops were grinning at each other as they drove off.