USA - Seattle housing for alcoholics saves money

[Milk man]

Study: Seattle housing for alcoholics saves money



SEATTLE (AP) — A program that gives homeless alcoholics a place to live and drink is saving taxpayers more than $4 million a year, according to a study released Tuesday.

The study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, endorses a "housing first" approach that calls for putting homeless people in permanent homes with supportive services instead of requiring them to stop drinking and taking drugs to earn their shelter.

But in some cases, the safe living situation helped residents to decrease their drinking or quit altogether, said lead researcher Mary Larimer, professor of psychiatry and behavior sciences at the University of Washington.

The University of Washington study followed 95 chronic alcoholics before and after they moved into an apartment building in downtown Seattle, as well as a control group on the waiting list for the building.

Researchers, who were not affiliated with the program, found the average monthly cost on taxpayers was $4,832 when each resident still lived on the street. Six months after residents moved into supportive housing, those costs dropped to $1,492 per person per month.

Even with the cost of the $11.2 million building, which was paid for by taxpayers and private donations, and the Downtown Emergency Service Center program itself, the program saves money, said Larimer.

Bill Hobson, executive director of the nonprofit center, said the finding has inspired his agency to look deeper into what could be done to encourage residents to sober up.

Clinical studies say a chronic alcoholic past the age of 45 has a 5 percent chance of recovery but given the early success of the program, "maybe the prognosis is not as bleak as we all thought," Hobson said.

The city has invested more in other "housing first" projects, including helping to pay for more than 200 units in buildings for homeless people who frequently use emergency services.

A program to house homeless Native Americans who have chronic drinking problems serves a similar population in Minneapolis.

Similar projects were being considered in New York, Atlanta, Fort Worth, Phoenix and Los Angeles, Hobson said.

By DONNA GORDON BLANKINSHIP – 03/31/2009

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/...dEbSQD9798JOG0

Reputation Comments on this post:

Good find, interesting results!

[chillinwill]

Thanks for posting this.

Please note that the way we post news has changed, because of our main news page. You can find the full instructions here.

The most important changes are:

• Articles are no longer posted in quotes.
• The introduction of the article should be in bold.
• Images should be added if possible and placed in the article, following the instructions linked to above and here.
• Information about the article, like link, author, date should be posted below the article.
• Your personal comments about the article can be posted either in quotes at the end of the article or in a separate post.
• The news forums may contain news articles only
• Make sure you include all the text from the original article. Don't just post the URL because web pages often disappear or get moved over time. Remove all unnecessary formatting from the text before posting. One easy way to do this is to paste the text into notepad or another text editor first, which will remove any formatting. Also try to remove picture captions, advertisement links and other text that doesn't belong to the body of the article.

Please be so kind to review your articles and correct this.

Further it may be good to know that recent articles with the highest thread ratings show up on the main news page. So without ratings, many people will not see it. So please rate news treads.
The main news page is accessible from the tabs on the top of any DF page.