For some, when they hear that Nest Community Shelter provides emergency sheltering to our unhoused neighbors, they think, “Oh, that’s it, these individuals are sheltered, and that will ‘fix’ the situation.” So often, much more is needed to truly support our unhoused neighbors’ journey back to stability. What often doesn’t get talked about at Nest is how we act as a connection point in our community to additional support services.
When most people hear the words “case management,” “mental health services,” or “job readiness,” they picture extras, or services that are nice to have but not necessary. The soft stuff. Things that might help, but that feel like they live outside the real work of getting someone off the street.
At Nest, wraparound services are not nice-to-haves. They are the load-bearing walls that enable someone to move from a crisis to a stable life. They are also, dollar for dollar, one of the most cost-effective investments a community like ours can make. It is one of the things that Nest works diligently on, in partnership with a vast network, to make change happen for our guests. Without connections and partnerships with these vital services, the public ends up paying more. A lot more. Just in less visible places.
Here is what wraparound services provide, what they cost, and what La Porte County would look like if the nonprofits delivering them were not here.
What Wraparound Actually Means
Wraparound is the simple recognition that almost no one becomes unhoused for a single reason, and rarely does one get rehoused through a single intervention. A bed solves tonight and all nights, while connections are made and services are utilized.
A guest walking through our door is likely facing several challenges at once. A lost job. An eviction on record. A mental health crisis that went untreated because there was no insurance. A car that broke down, taking the whole budget with it. An ID that was stolen, making it impossible to apply for work, housing, or benefits.
Wraparound services work to address those layers simultaneously, meaning case management, where one trained person helps a guest build a plan, navigate agencies, chase down documents, and follow through week after week. Mental and behavioral health support, because trauma, depression, and anxiety are often both causes and consequences of housing loss. Job readiness, which includes resume help, interview prep, appropriate work attire, transportation to the first shift, and steady coaching that turns a job offer into a six-month paycheck. Benefits navigation for Social Security, Medicaid, SNAP, and veteran services is identified as a standard part of this work. These services are the difference between someone leaving a shelter with a plan and someone leaving a shelter with nothing but a plastic bag. This is the work we do at Nest: connect our guests to these services so that they’ll be successful in their stability once they leave our shelter.
The Math People Do Not See
When wraparound services are not available, the costs do not disappear. The costs must go somewhere; most commonly, they shift onto emergency rooms, hospitals, jails, and court systems, all of which are paid for by the public, one way or another.
Earlier this month, we highlighted the increased expenses our community incurs when there is nowhere else for an unhoused individual to go for medical or crisis care. According to the website HFMA.org, “unhoused individuals visit the emergency room an average of five times per year, at roughly $3,700 per visit, for an average annual ER cost of about $18,500 per person. The highest users can cost the system more than $44,000 per year in ER visits alone.” That is before a single overnight hospital stay. The website Greendoors goes on to state that, “roughly 80 percent of those ER visits are for illnesses that could have been treated with preventive care.”
Our jails also incur higher costs when services are unavailable. According to in.gov, it costs Indiana an average of $52.61 per day, or $19,202.65 per year, to incarcerate one adult in a state facility. However, an article from June 2025, in the Indiana Capital Chronicle stated that an Indiana Sheriffs’ Association study found the actual cost of housing an inmate in a county jail averages closer to $74 per day.
Now compare that to what a night at Nest costs. We operate at $20.55 per guest overnight and serve meals at $10.27 each. A full week of shelter, meals, and connection to wraparound support at Nest costs less than a single emergency room visit.
When people receive housing paired with case management and behavioral health services, ER visits drop by 61 percent, inpatient hospitalizations drop by 77 percent, and overall healthcare costs drop by 59 percent, according to Greendoors.org. This means that every dollar invested in connections to and in wraparound services saves several more in hospital bills, jail beds, and court time that the public would otherwise absorb.
How La Porte County Nonprofits Share the Journey
Nest Community Shelter in Michigan City is the only year-round emergency shelter that welcomes men, women, and women with children. The guests who walk through our door will often need connections to partners that specialize in health care, a food pantry for when they’re housed, job training, job placement, legal help with document recovery, or access to a community closet through a faith community. At the very least, most, if not all, will sit down with a case manager who can direct guests to the services they need.
Each one of those partners is an expert in their piece. Which means we do not have to build a behavioral health clinic in our basement, a food warehouse in our parking lot, or a legal aid office down the hall. And none of those partners have to build a shelter. Everyone does what they are built to do, and the guest rebuilds, utilizing support from the whole network.
This is a cost-sharing infrastructure. Every nonprofit that specializes in one piece reduces what every other nonprofit has to spend on building redundant services. It is the reason a community of our size can deliver wraparound support at all.
What Would Our Community Look Like Without This Network?
Picture La Porte County without these organizations.
People cycle through emergency rooms at $3,700 per visit instead of receiving preventive care at a partner clinic. Jail beds fill at $52.61 per day, with people who simply found themselves without a safe place to sleep. Employers cannot find workers because no one is helping people get an ID or transportation. Neighbors stay unhoused longer, which costs everyone more in the long run and costs them the most of all.
Nothing about that scenario is cheaper. It just moves the invoice to a different desk.
A Structure of Support
Wraparound services are not fluff. They are the walls that hold the whole system up. They keep emergency rooms free for emergencies. They keep jails from becoming de facto emergency shelters. They keep people moving from crisis to stability at a fraction of what failure would cost all of us.
When you support Nest, you are not funding extras. You are funding infrastructure, and the connection point for our guests to find stability. You are helping a neighbor get from a crisis bed to a lease, and you are quietly saving taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars in the process.
That is the math most people never see. Now you have.
