[skybrian]

Unfortunately 40k per person isn't likely to get the attention of the someone trying to maximize the amount of good done per dollar (those of us who follow GiveWell) when the money would go further with the charities they currently recommend. The "exotic underclass" has the "advantage" if you can call it that of benefiting a lot from small amounts of money per person, so you can help more people.

We need different arguments for why we should help people closer to us. One reason might be that it's less abstract than people in a different country that you'll never meet, but I think that argument needs to be developed.

[tsunamifury]

It already costs the city 70k per person per year to go through a recovery program, this reduced it to 40k the first year then 0 the second year -- netting large municipal and state savings.

[skybrian]

That's an excellent reason why the city or state should fund it.

For a private charity, net gain is one person helped and 70k / year spent with average efficiency by the government on something else (or spent by taxpayers if it's returned). That's somewhat hard to judge versus alternatives.