This is liberalism in Seattle:
Seventy-five hard-core alcoholics, accustomed to living on the streets and spending nights in emergency rooms, detox centers or jail cells, are about to get an invitation to move into a new apartment building all their own on the edge of downtown Seattle.
Make no mistake, this is not about detox, cleaning them up, or getting them treatment. On the contrary:
There is a proviso, however. While allowed to drink all the booze they want in their rooms, they must agree to behave responsibly when outside. That's because the tenants now will be neighbors in a business district that plans to watch them closely for any slip-ups
R-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-ght!
Though it's not an alcohol-treatment center, Hobson said, he hopes tenants will moderate their drinking over time. Five clinicians and a registered nurse have been hired. The minimum number of staffers in the building will be three, from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m., Hobson said.
I hope a million bucks is in my bank account tomorrow too and that will happen just like these hardcore drunks are going to moderate their drinking. If they could do that, they wouldn't be a problem in the first place!
Tenants will be able to come and go as they please, but the number of visitors they have will be restricted. Tenants (sic) who repeatedly break house rules, including the "good neighbor" behavior provision of the lease, will be subject to eviction.
I’m not proud to say that I’ve been drunk. It’s not something I brag about, but in my younger days, I’ve been rip-roaring, knee-walking, and commode-hugging hammered. I was never an alcoholic (an alcoholic being defined as someone physically addicted and would go through withdrawals if they quit cold turkey), but I spent a lot of time looking at life through the bottom of a beer glass while keeping two shifts at Adolph Coors working overtime to keep it filled. I just walked away from it 14 years ago and I haven’t looked back.
So with that street cred established, let me tell you when you are drunk, you most likely wouldn’t know the difference between a house rule and a house plant. In other words, alcohol breaks down your inhibitions. When your drunk, your sense of right and wrong is as skewed as the rest of you.
Who is paying for this? We are. First it is costing 11.2 million dollars to build and then ¾ million a year to run the place each year after that. Here is how it breaks down:
Construction funding is coming from a combination of sources, including the WA State Housing Trust Fund, King County Housing Opportunity Fund, City of Seattle Housing Levy, Low Income Housing Tax Credit Program of the IRS and the Federal Home Loan Bank. Tax credits make up just over one half of the $8.7 million capital development expense.
The projected annual operating cost is $750,000. The US Department of Housing and Urban Development (McKinney SHP) is providing about 75% of the annual operational costs. Tenant rents and rent subsidies through Section 8 make up the remainder.
Doing a little rough math, 25% of 750,000 is $187,000. Since there will be 75 residents, we’ll divide 187,000 further and that come out to 2500 dollars per resident. Dividing that out over 12 months, we get about $208 and change per month. Since section 8 money will also be used in that $187,000, that means these men and women will be boozing it up in there own little studio apartment and pay next to nothing each month. What in Hell is wrong with this picture?
Now why are they doing this, you ask? Good question and I have their idiotic answer!
After much controversy and a failed legal challenge, the Downtown Emergency Service Center is set to open at 1811 Eastlake Ave. It is an $11.2 million, four-story housing project for 75 homeless men and women who are among Seattle's worst-case chronic alcoholics. Tenants are being picked from a list of those identified by King County as draining the most emergency and criminal-justice resources — and therefore taxpayer dollars — from the community.
In 2000, the top 20 individual utilizers of drug and alcohol crisis services accrued costs of slightly over $54,000 per person. Collectively, these top 20 cost the community more than $1 million in crisis response resources, not including the attending costs of police time, ambulance services, sobering van services, legal costs associated with court appearances, and inpatient hospital visits. It is generally believed that adding these costs brings the annualized system costs to $100,000 per person. We forecast the 1811 Eastlake Project will reduce such utilization by 25%. Consequently, the project will pay for itself – capital and operational costs – in less than 8 years.
So the reason is that they are draining all this money from the us is because they “forecast” a 25% savings on the burden to the emergency and criminal justice systems. Again, I’m doing some math. Let’s take that 11.2 mil, ass in yearly ops cost (which will not remain at 750,000) and look at our costs for this place at the 5 year mark. 5 year @ 750,000 is 3.75 million. Adding that to the 11.2 and adding a bit for inflation, we’ll use the nice round figure of 15 million dollars from start plus the first 5 years. Come out to 200,000 grand per head or 40,000 per year.
But here is the rub – these people are hardcore juicers. They will still burden the courts and the emergency rooms! They will still break laws and they will have a huge amount of health related conditions. The will wake up from a binge out on the street or in the park and require ambulances and services. They will still commit crimes and be sent to jail.
I don’t believe for one second that we will save one lousy dime. Not to mention that if these people break the rules, out they go back into the regular system so what have we saved?
I don’t pretend to know the whole solution, but giving drunks an almost free place to get drunk ain’t it.
This is liberalism in Seattle! The inmates are running the asylum!
MERRY CHRISTMAS!
VW
To the people who run Seattle, anything that freaks out the straights sounds like a good idea.
Posted by: Dave Munger | Saturday, December 17, 2005 at 19:19