HUMANE CARE OF ALCOHOLICS MAKES SENSE

Elizabeth Hovde posed several questions in her Oct. 24 column,
"Seattle says bottoms up to alcoholics," addressing Seattle's
proposed housing program for chronically homeless alcoholics.
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Opinion by Sally Erickson - The Columbian - November 14, 2002

She asks: Why will eligible residents get a free ride in housing
that many sober, working people could not afford? And while the
offer may help some chronic alcoholics, what of the others? She
also questioned the costs.

I was curious about the questions Hovde raised, so I contacted
Bill Hobson, director of the agency that will manage this new
housing. He told me that it is expensive to develop housing in
Seattle that's affordable to people who earn less than 30 percent
of the area median income.

The average building cost per unit in 2000-01 was $121,000. When
I checked in with development staff at the Vancouver Housing
Authority, they gave me similar numbers.

Seattle-area rent for even a studio apartment is about $584 per
month. Someone earning minimum wage can afford rent of about $359
per month. Disabled or elderly persons on Social Security can
afford rents of about $171 per month.

Most working people can't afford rental housing in Seattle. One
would have to earn about $11.23 an hour to afford a studio
apartment. That is a higher wage than paid for most food service
or retail work.

Hobson told me that when Seattle's project opens, it will cost
just less than $10,000 a year per resident. That's about a third
of the annual cost of a jail cell in King County. That money buys
on-site clinical support specialists (three chemical dependency
counselors and a mental health clinician), a registered nurse,
two meals per day and a building staffed 24/7 by two or more.

According to a report from the King County Mental Health Chemical
Abuse and Dependency Services Division, the average chronic
public inebriate in downtown Seattle costs taxpayers more than
$100,000 a year in emergency room visits, jail time, police,
prosecutor and public defender time as well as detox time. A
recent study at Harborview Medical Center, focused on 20 homeless
chronic alcoholics, disclosed that in 1999 they averaged $89,000
per person in emergency room costs alone.

According to Hobson, Seattle's project has the support of all
levels of government and, somewhat unpredictably, the Downtown
Seattle Association.

The association includes the most influential Seattle businesses
(Nordstrom, Starbucks, Boeing, Microsoft, etc.). They support
this project because they have been persuaded by the logic of it.
The clinical literature about homeless, chronic alcoholics is
fairly conclusive. Less than 5 percent ever achieve abstinence
during the remainder of their lives. In the meantime, they are
here. The question is, how do we want to assist or manage them?

Morality argued

Readers may or may not agree on the morality of allowing homeless
alcoholics to die on the streets through a sort of benign
neglect. What would probably interest all of us is the
cost-benefit analysis. If the Seattle project can reduce
residents' use of jails, hospitals and such by just 25 percent of
their current levels (and they think they can do better than
that), the building will have paid for itself in taxpayer savings
within six years of operation.

That's the core rationale behind what they're doing. More and
more communities are adopting housing-first and harm-reduction
housing models when serving people who've been homeless for a
long time. Permanent supported housing is humane. It is also
kinder to our tax dollars and our frayed nerves.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt once said, "The country needs … bold,
persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method
and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all,
try something." I think that's what they are doing in Seattle.

It is my hope that here, in Clark County, we can continue to combine
what is humane with what makes financial sense to come up
with ideas or best practices that work for our community and all
its residents.

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Sally Erickson is director of the Council for the Homeless.
Copyright © 2002 by The Columbian Publishing
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