How much does Washoe County spend per person each day at Cares campus homeless shelter?

• Question: How much does it cost Washoe County to accommodate one person at the Nevada Cares Campus emergency homeless shelter in Reno?

• Short answer: $64 a day.

That’s based on the number of beds each night and operational expenses for fiscal year 2024, which ended in June, as provided by Washoe County.

Rumors about costs at Nevada Cares Campus

The Cares campus faces much speculation about what’s being spent on Washoe County’s homeless population.

For instance, a San Francisco TV station did a story late last year about what the Bay Area could learn from Washoe County’s homeless efforts.

It mentioned that San Francisco County, with about 700,000 people, spends $672 million a year on homeless services while Washoe County, with 500,000 people, spends $32 million.

This inspired a debate on social media about whether Washoe County spends a lot more on the Cares campus than the story claimed.

Last month, Commissioner Mike Clark mentioned during a public meeting that he'd seen a different news report claiming $300 million had possibly been spent on homelessness in Washoe County.

He was told this was incorrect, and he requested accurate Cares campus figures. The Reno Gazette Journal had also requested shelter data.

How to figure out the cost per person at Cares campus

A widely used method to figure out per-person costs is called COIF, or the cost of incarceration fee . It’s used by the Federal Bureau of Prisons to analyze how much it spends to house inmates.

The calculation is simple: Take how much is spent on inmates for operational costs – such as guards, utilities, food, cleaning, etc. – and then divide that by the number of inmate days. This does not include construction costs. An inmate day is one person in prison for one day.

It costs about $120 a day to house a federal inmate.

The Reno Gazette Journal asked Washoe County how much it spends on homeless services at the Cares campus for staff, utilities, food, cleaning, etc., as well as the number of client days.

How much does Washoe County spend per homeless client at the Nevada Cares Campus?

The county doesn’t track client days but rather bed nights. A bed night is one person spending one night at the shelter.

The figures provided by the county include bed nights in three places: the main Cares campus shelter; Safe Camp, which is a program on the Cares campus where people sleep in small, self-standing individual units; and an emergency overflow area with cots that is set up for six months each year in case of cold weather. Full capacity was assumed for calculation purposes.

For fiscal year 2024, there were 233,293 total bed nights with operating expenses of $15.1 million, according to Washoe County.

That works out to $64.44 a night for each person staying at the Cares campus – $23,519 per person per year.

An October 2022 Washoe County presentation to the Community Homeless Advisory Board listed the cost per night per person at the Cares campus as $74.

Dana Searcy, head of Washoe County homeless services, said the $74 figure should not be used for comparison because it was based on the Cares campus' budget, not actual expenses, and it did not include Safe Camp beds.

More detailed numbers for Cares campus expected in the future

The county plans to have more detailed numbers going forward.

"The next step for the campus is to separate the money into all the different programs and really analyze the costs of one bed night at the shelter vs. at the emergency overflow vs. at the Safe Camp," Searcy said.

Emergency homeless shelter compared with Washoe jail and Nevada hospitals

For those who have no permanent home, the options to get off the street are often a homeless shelter, jail or a hospital.

Using figures from the 2023 Washoe County Sheriff's Office annual report , it costs $174 a day per inmate at the county jail.

According to the health care analysis organization KFF , it costs $2,410 per inpatient day at a Nevada public hospital, based on 2022 data.

Comparison to San Francisco

Good comparisons with other cities and states are not easily found.

The federal Department of Housing and Urban Development does not track per-person costs at shelters, although it requires collection of other homeless statistics such as the annual Point in Time surveys of how many unhoused people are living in communities.

“In general, HUD only collects cost data as part of infrequent research studies and not as a regular course of business,” a spokesperson told the Reno Gazette Journal.

The last study it did on homelessness costs was in 2006.

San Francisco – which looked to Washoe County for inspiration – shares robust data online for its homeless programs, under the name Our City, Our Home. It includes the city and county of San Francisco.

In fiscal year 2022-2023, it reported spending $38.8 million on shelter and hygiene services for the homeless.

It has 750 shelter beds. If each was filled every day for that year, it works out to $142 per person per day.

The numbers from the San Francisco TV station mentioned above included capital costs.

Capital costs for Nevada Cares Campus

Some community members have also asked how much has been spent on construction projects at the Cares campus.

This falls under the category of capital expenses and is not included in operating services helping specific individuals.

According to Washoe County, Cares campus capital expenses total $78.73 million. This amount excludes purchase of the land and the initial building, which were both handled by the city of Reno.

Searcy said the $78.73 million will see the Cares campus through to the completion of construction, expected by Spring 2025.

The city of Reno paid 10% toward Cares campus capital expenses, while the city of Sparks paid 5%.

Neither pays anything toward ongoing operating expenses.

In an agreement that went into effect in 2022, Washoe County took responsibility for homeless sheltering while the cities of Reno and Sparks changed their homeless efforts to tackle other services such as those for homeless youth, people with drug and mental health issues, and community-oriented police and court efforts.

Mark Robison is the state politics reporter for the Reno Gazette Journal, with occasional forays into other topics. Email comments to mrobison@rgj.com or comment on Mark’s Greater Reno Facebook page .

This article originally appeared on Reno Gazette Journal: How much does Washoe County spend per person each day at Cares campus homeless shelter?