As we continue our series on how having a local shelter benefits the communities it serves, the conversation for some often comes down to cost. At Nest, our guests are not a line item on a budget; they are neighbors and community members, and, at the same time, the care and support we provide comes at a cost.

When a shelter is unavailable, this cost is borne by hospitals, jails, municipal budgets, courts, ambulance runs, encampment cleanups, and every taxpayer in the community. The only real question is whether that money is buying stability or worsening the situation for everyone involved.

Today, we are going to show how having a shelter in place eases the burden on the communities it serves. The math below compares one night. One person. Two scenarios.

What One Night at Nest Costs

At Nest, the current cost to provide one guest with one night of safe, supervised emergency shelter, a hot meal, and a small breakfast is $20.55. That figure covers a bed, two meals, case management, and staff on hand around the clock. It also covers the infrastructure that keeps someone out of the cold, out of the emergency room, and out of local jails as an overnight shelter.

Now compare that number to what one night looks like when a person is cycling through the systems that, by default, absorb the cost of being unhoused.

What One Night Unhoused Can Cost the Community

People who are unhoused do not disappear when shelter is unavailable. They move through the most expensive public systems a community operates. Here are the costs of those systems, based on the most recent and widely cited research.

Emergency Room Visits

The average cost of a single emergency room visit in Indiana is $1,618, according to data published by Sanctuary Indy, citing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Between 2015 and 2018, the Midwest recorded 234 emergency room visits per 100 unhoused persons, compared with 42 per 100 non-homeless persons.

Nationally, the Healthcare Financial Management Association reports that a person experiencing homelessness visits the emergency department an average of five times per year, and annual emergency department costs for a single frequent user can reach $44,000.

A single emergency room visit in Indiana, at $1,618, covers the equivalent of 78 nights of shelter at $20.55 per guest.

Hospitalization

Research published in the New England Journal of Medicine, cited by the National Coalition for the Homeless, found that people who are unhoused spend an average of four days longer per hospital visit than comparable housed patients. Hospitals absorb much of that cost as uncompensated care, a loss that is then recouped through higher charges to insured patients and higher premiums across the community.

Jail and Law Enforcement

The average daily cost to house an adult inmate in the State of Indiana is $52.61, according to the Indiana Department of Correction. County jail costs are often higher. The Indiana Capital Chronicle reported in June 2025 that a study by the Indiana Sheriffs’ Association found that county jail costs average about $74 per day, with Elkhart County costs ranging from $55 to $125 per day, depending on an inmate’s medical and mental health needs.

Effective July 1, 2026, Indiana Senate Bill 285 classifies camping or sleeping on public land as a Class C misdemeanor, punishable by up to 60 days in jail and a $500 fine. At $52.61 per day in state facilities, a full 60-day sentence costs taxpayers $3,156.60, equivalent to roughly 154 nights of shelter.

Encampment Response

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Exploring Homelessness Among People Living in Encampments and Associated Cost study found that cities spend between $1,672 and $6,208 per unsheltered person per year on encampment-related activities alone, including outreach, cleaning, clearance, and shelter placement. These costs fall almost entirely on city general funds because HUD dollars cannot be used for encampment cleaning, sanitation, or policing.

Side by Side: One Night, Two Scenarios

All figures are drawn from the cited sources and reflect the most recent data available at the time of publication.

What the Math Shows

A single emergency room visit in Indiana covers 78 nights of shelter. One year of average emergency room use by an unhoused individual is equivalent to nearly 2.5 years of shelter for that person. A single 60-day jail sentence under Indiana’s new public-camping law costs the equivalent of 154 nights of shelter, without addressing the underlying causes of unhousing that led to the arrest.

These are costs the community is already paying, distributed across hospital budgets, county budgets, city general funds, and the premiums of every insured household in the area.

The Indiana Context

In 2024, the statewide Point in Time Count identified 4,854 Hoosiers experiencing homelessness on a single January night, with roughly one in four unsheltered, according to the Indiana Housing and Community Development Authority. Outside of Indianapolis, the number of unsheltered people doubled over two years, from 597 in 2022 to 1,138 in 2024.

Every unsheltered night is an opportunity for an emergency room visit, a hospital admission, a law enforcement contact, or a court appearance, each of which costs far more than the shelter bed that could have prevented it.

What Shelter Actually Buys

At $20.55 per guest per night, shelter is not a luxury service, nor is it a long-term solution. It is an interruption. It is the point in the cycle when a person stops being processed by emergency systems and begins to be connected to case management, healthcare, employment resources, and, eventually, permanent housing.

Research compiled by the National Coalition for the Homeless shows that once people are stably housed, emergency room visits drop by nearly 61 percent, healthcare costs fall by 59 percent, and general inpatient hospitalizations decrease by 77 percent.

Shelters are the first step in that chain. It is also, at $20.55 per night, the cheapest step by a wide margin for our community.

Investing in Solutions

The math makes the case, and the research confirms that shelters benefit the entire community, not just those utilizing them. Each community must decide whether it wants to spend its resources managing a crisis in perpetuity or investing in the interruption that allows people, and the community around them, to move forward.

 

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