OPINION: SEATTLE SAYS BOTTOMS UP TO ALCOHOLICS

How can it be that chronic, homeless alcoholics will be getting
free rides on a portion of Seattle real estate that many of us
could never afford clean, sober and fully employed?
__________________________________________________________
By ELIZABETH HOVDE - The Columbian - October 24, 2002

Get drunk! Daily! Win a free apartment in downtown Seattle! Really.

This is the kind of stunt that makes taxpayers think social
welfare is socialism. Even when it is most usually not.

There are plenty of welfare programs that are more of the
trampoline variety than the hammock sort.

Federal welfare reform
laws have transformed many well-intended but misguided hand-out
programs into life-changing hand-up programs.

While poor and
needy people will always be among us and require our help, most
people are able to move from government dependence to
self-sufficiency.

Welfare reform and an emphasis on work or
work-seeking requirements have showed us that truth while
restoring some needed balance to government-mandated charity.

Seattle, King County, state and federal officials must be looped
to willingly take part in something that sends welfare back to the
hammock with Jimmy Buffet playing in the background.

An apartment complex will be built in north downtown Seattle to
house 75 of Seattle's estimated 500 homeless alcoholics.

The
building will be owned and managed by a nonprofit agency called
Downtown Emergency Service Center. Tenants will be allowed to
drink and entertain guests in their rooms. Residents will also
get two meals a day and access to medical care. They will be
asked to pay 30 percent of their income in rent after the first
three months that is if they have an income.

Someone is not sober.

Of the $8.7 million price tag to build the
apartment, King County is pitching in $1 million, the city of
Seattle is contributing $1.8 million, $900,000 is coming from the
state, $50,000 is financed by DESC and the remaining $4.95
million will come from federal sources.

Taxpayers, most of whom are quite benevolent, should be outraged.
Most of them don't mind a myriad of social services offered to
people in need so long as personal responsibility is attached.
This program comes free of any such hassle. The project doesn't
require participants to even try to get clean. That isn't even
benevolent. It makes taxpayers accomplices to the nightmare these
people live. True benevolence requires that people invest in
their recovery to some degree. It does not accommodate those
whose only desire is to drink in a warm room with friends instead
of on a cold street.

When trying to defend the concept, proponents of the proposed
building point to a similar apartment complex in Capitol Hill.
With 92 units, it has housed about 500 chronic alcoholics in
eight years, an Associated Press story says. The story also
reported that only around 10 percent of the building's tenants
have stopped drinking.

Worse, while Seattle helps 75 chronic alcoholics, what of the
other 425? What about the numerous others spending time in
treatment centers trying to hold together families and jobs?
There is something wrong with a service that has eligibility
requirements that rule out people who are working hard to change.
That's especially true as state and local governments have had to
cut other social services to accommodate budget shortfalls.

Not neighborly

General taxpayers and alcoholics who need legitimate help are
both being slighted. But business owners neighboring the proposed
development are suffering downright abuse. A co-owner of a
business called Northwest Trophy, next door to the proposed
development, worries his property value is now in the toilet. And
half of the 234 rooms in a one-year-old, $27 million hotel by
Marriott will overlook the back decks of the coming apartments.

As for the argument that the ongoing costs involved with housing
75 drunks will be cheaper than hospitalizing and policing them,
we'll see. If tenants are accommodated to remain alcoholics, it
is an unconvincing prediction. Besides, even if it were cheaper,
it isn't right.

The kind of social welfare I want to be a part of, at least attempts
to move people forward.

Providing a desperate man or woman a warm place to vomit doesn't cut it.


ELIZABETH HOVDE elizabeth.hovde@...
Copyright © 2002 by The Columbian Publishing Co
____________________________________________________________
source page: http://tinyurl.com/2r1j

Homeless Daily News - H. C. Covington, Editor
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HomelessNews/