Folks may have already heard about this, but the results of Seattle's
experiment with 'wet' housing- housing that allows chronic alcoholic
residents to drink in their own rooms- have started to be published.
Basically, the city bought a building with rooms for 75 people, then
took a list of the worst homeless chronic alcoholics, and went right down the
list offering them housing at the Housing First site until the building
was full.
Of course it was attacked by all the usual suspects for the usual
reasons. That is encouraged drinking, was morally wrong, that it wouldn't work,
that it would be a problem to neighbors. None of this happened.
Rather alcohol consumption in these worst of the worst dropped from 15.7
drinks/day to 10.6 (several quit!). Median taxpayer cost (jail, detox,
ER visits, other medical costs, etc.) dropped from $4066/month to
$958/month after 1 year. It ended up saving Seattle taxpayers $4 million in the
first year of operation alone! And according to the folks I work with
in the Harborview ER, we just don't see them anymore (many used to be in
there weekly or more). Not bad for something virtually all the media
and drug warriors said was an obviously terrible idea!
http://www.desc.org/documents/
http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/
http://seattletimes.nwsource.
http://www.seattlepi.com/
Mike
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Michael Clark M.D., Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Dept. of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science
University of Washington
Harborview Medical Center, Box 359911
Seattle, WA 98104
Pager/Voice-Mail 206-541-9241
email: msclark@u.washington.edu
------------------------------
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary
depends upon his not understanding it" -Upton Sinclair
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