Comments on Congrats to DESC

This is the kind of innovative and effective programing that demonstrates why Nickels' new homeless encampment rules are nothing less than cruel and inhumane. If you want to end homelessness you don't criminalize the poor and homeless - you create good programs to get them well and keep them alive.

This is a well deserved prize by one hell of a hard-working organization who had the strength to develop a very controversial project despite lots of nay-sayers and NIMBY community objections.

The figures mentioned in that article are staggering. Good for them; now I know a good place to direct donations.

This is horrible program. Sure, it gets just a few off the streets and saves the city a little money but it perpetuates bad behavior. Hard-core down-and-out alcoholism (like homelessness) is to be discouraged, not rewarded.

This program is truly innovative and progressive. This is what a homeless-free Seattle can look like. AND IT MIGHT EVEN SAVE THE CITY SOME MONEY!!!

Poor people with mental illness tend to self-medicate. Acknowledging this, rather than treating addicts like they are simply "weak," allows agencies such as this to get people the help they need. Cheers for DESC! I'm glad that their efforts are turning out to be successful.

Congratulations, DESC. This is a hugely innovative program that changes the way people think about street drunks and (some homeless). Raindrop, if you knew anything about the people in this program, you'd know that this is the last, the only chance they will ever have. Homeless people are not infants; they have to right to live the best lives they can, and sometimes those lives will include alcohol, whether dogoodniks think they should or not. Alcoholism is a complex subject, and people shouldn't have to freeze to death if they suffer from it. This is a beautiful, beautiful program.

The City commissioned a study about the first year of this program that was released a couple of weeks ago. The numbers are even more impressive than the P-I article states. Among the stats after 12 months:

Tenants' use of crisis services declined substantially, resulting in a $2.5 million savings to public systems:

92 percent fewer nights in emergency shelter; 87 percent fewer admissions to sobering centers; 45 percent fewer bookings to county jail; and 41 percent fewer medical expenses.

Tenants also reduced their use of alcohol:

One third reduction in the number of days residents used alcohol to the point of intoxication and 63 percent increase in abstinence from drinking alcohol.

Check it out Raindrop: You can treat people like human beings AND help them to drink less!

I once had a conversation with Mark Sidran about the possible benefits of moving toward wet bed shelters as a harm-reduction measure, and he seemed to actually agree with me - thus proving that there really is a first time for everything.

My brother has been in and out of detox for years, and if his wife means what she says and lives up to her threat of “one last chance” – he’ll likely be homeless. He’s very scared right now as he should be. Maybe he’ll keep going to meetings and try to stay sober and give his liver a rest. But (if he was in Seattle) he’d gladly take this DESC program in a New York second and give his family and friends the finger.

You can point to some great stats and say this program is all well and good, but this simply gives the perception to chronic alcoholics that there’s a subsidized la-la land waiting for them and they can drink as much rot-gut vodka as they choose. To hell with their families who have been trying to improve their lives with treatment programs that they can just give it up and rot in this hedonistic purgatory paid for by taxpayers.

DESC is inherently immoral.

Wow, you've got something burning in there, Raindrop. That's not how the program works at all. With your family history you should know as well as anyone that treatment doesn't always work. And more to the point, you don't just walk into this program because you want to get a load on and have the state pay for it. It's a last stop for people whose ONLY OTHER ALTERNATIVE is death in a ditch, literally.

As far as taxpayer cost goes, it's MUCH LESS than the only other option on the table, which is constant emergency services. Read the article. And this doesn't just save the state money; it restores dignity to the residents' lives, who are treated like people again. Did you not notice the part where they DRINK LESS?

The treatment model actually has a much, much lower success rate, especially for these people.

You know, in the days before condoization, downtown was chock-full of these places, only they weren't run by the city, they were run by private landlords, and they were called SROs, and the people who lived in them lived life to the best of their abilities, as drunks. They worked, casual labor, and they drank in their rooms or the many dive bars that used to line the streets of downtown, and they were a blight in the eyes of prudes and bluenoses, but, you know, they were citizens every bit as much as you or me.

Raindrop, did you even read the articles? The people who were accepted into this program were some of the least functional street drunks in Seattle. These aren't people who decided to give the finger to their families and go live in, as you seem to see it, a drunken utopia. It was the streets or nothing for the people in this program. How many times has your brother been arrested for being drunk in public this month?

But then, if I had family as judgmental as you're being right now, I'd want to give them the finger too.

I did read the articles. Even if it saves the city money, even if they drink less, and even if it cuts down on EMT calls it doesn't mean it's right. I object to government providing drunks a subsidized existence in which their behavior can further ruin their bodies. If private groups want to do this, fine. But it sends a very wrong signal to society for the government to throw in the towel when it comes to established treatment programs and services for chronic alcoholics that seek abstinence.

This reminds me of that Star Trek episode in which two worlds adopted a computerized system in which their populations reported to painless death chambers based on warfare algorithms. It sanitizes it, makes people comfortable, but the problem remains.

Chronic alcoholism is best dealt with professional treatment programs. And the best course of action is to quit drinking, and to "quit" over and over and over again until real success.

If I sound judgmental - that's great. It's high time people started being more judgmental against the depravity of chromic alcoholism.

Also, I don't buy the line that some are so dysfunctional that they can never respond to treatments or hope for sobriety. I know this is true from my own AA meetings.

Calm yourself Raindrop. Why don't you have a nice cocktail and relax?

I thought this was a great idea when I heard of it, and I'm glad it's panned out. I hope they do more of this sort of housing.

@12,

Who cares if they're destroying their bodies? That's their right and, if your callous attitude is any indication, it seems that you'd be happy to see them die that much faster.

Besides, it's not like the government is buying them booze.

For my part, I want to see them off the street (i.e. away from me) and taken off the street in a humane way.

I must have missed the part where someone was saying there's no hope for treatment. But before a homeless alcoholic can make the decision to battle their addiction, they certainly need a place to live where they are allowed to make their own decisions, not have someone else's idea of morality forced on them. Turns out, no one likes being treated like a child (even if they're addicted).

I've got to say, I find your idea of morality a little confusing. You'd have someone freeze to death in the streets rather than provide them with a place where they don't have to hide from their problems? I'd say death is pretty much the worst thing that can happen to your body.

#14 How fucking rude - what kind of cutsie pie animal are you?

And the fucking fake name is too much.

To tell an avowed alcholoic to go have a cocktail is par for a 14 year old punk.

I gather from your posts that you are far removed from your teens. How fucking rude and crude.

Shame.

And I enjoy reading some well worded counterpoint - cuts through the herd think - and fleshes out the topic.

I support this project, but the problem will not be the space but funding the social network of service that make it work. VERY expensive, and budget cutting time will come.

ditto Lauren and Fnarf and pretty much everyone except Raindrop.

Hey Raindrop, you want your head to really explode:

Vancouver, BC (along with several spots in Australia and Europe) has a safe injection room where folks can come in off the street and inject drugs. Results after a year and a half are very encouraging.

Also, NAOMI (North American Opiate Maintenance Initiative) is up and running in Toronto and Vancouver and compares the treatment effectiveness of methadone v. prescription heroin. Similar trials in Europe have shown dramatic results.

And even though NAOMI will probably never be allowed in the US, it's just a matter of time before the first safe injection site opens here.

Just thought you might want something to take your mind off 1811.

I didn't get the impression that raindrop's a recovering alcoholic. She said she's been to meetings, but so have I (supporting my father). I can't imagine someone who has actually dealt with an addiction would have her perspective on the subject, but I've been wrong before...

...and now I feel like a jerk for assuming gender. Damn it, liberal sensibilities, leave me alone for a second!

This subject has gotten me thinking about the shelter I worked at in St. Louis. It was a great place--each woman got her own room, and though we said the limit was six months, as long as the guest followed the house rules they were free to stay until they got on their feet (even if it took years). We connected them to community resources for employment, healthcare, whatever they needed.

The big rule was no intoxication. Most of the women there were battling some addiction (everything from gambling to crack), and we were trying to provide healing environment. Guess which women got kicked out of the house? The ones who were most addicted, who needed the most help. It was really hard to see them come through again and again (after the one month waiting period for getting kicked out), never staying long enough to get the help they needed. Glad someone else noticed the problem and realized that we need to try a different approach.

Oh dry up, Jack. Raindrop's a self-righteous jerk, no matter what his/her "recovery" status is. Besides, anyone in recovery who crumbles at the idea of someone suggesting they have a drink - especially a cyberdrink - isn't really in recovery.

I know this will come as a surprise to the Friends of Bill crowd, but AA isn't the only game in town. If this program helps ween chronic drunks off the bottle, or even if it just gives them a clean safe place to get wasted, that's fine with me.

And for you to go off about a fake name, "Jack", is a bit of a stretch, don't ya think?