Off street corners, but not off the alcohol

MomSeattle · DadSeattle · SPI · MySeattlePix · My account

Local

US/World

Sports

Business

A&E

Life

Comics

Photos

Opinion

Blogs

Buy Ads

NWsource

Robert L. Jamieson Jr.

Friday, November 22, 2002

Off street corners, but not off the alcohol

By ROBERT L. JAMIESON Jr.
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST

It's not the easiest news to swallow.

The city is paving the way to build housing for chronic alcoholics on Eastlake Avenue. No problem there.

Wait, there's more.

Drunks in the planned $8 million building would be permitted to booze up.

Say it together now, kids: Enabling behavior!

The last thing a person suffering from alcoholism needs is an environment that encourages addiction. Under the plan, people would be swapping cold, lonely street corners for comfy, private digs where they can swig good libation.

Call it "Moist Housing," complete with these amenities:

No sobriety. No zero tolerance. No personal accountability.

Some experts say the concept comes from the school of "harm reduction," the controversial idea that you can lower the harm caused by drug addiction rather than attacking the disease at its root.

Sounds like a crutch.

Some folks point out the plan would be an act of benevolence for hardened drinkers, some of whom might be suffering from severe mental illness. Get those sick people in the door, the reasoning goes, and maybe, just maybe they'll be exposed to something -- a great counselor, perhaps? -- that will save their lives.

That's all nice and moral and warm 'n' fuzzy, but what good are positive efforts if there's a bottle of devil's brew back in the room?

I sought out Cathy Polin, who knows a thing or two about such matters.

"If I told you there was a place where you could live, where you could get drunk, where you would be fed, where no one would get mad at you, then why on earth would you want to get clean and sober?" Polin asked.

Well, um, you wouldn't, even if you had a strong desire.

Polin adds, "You are getting the drunk off the street. That benefits the neighborhood and the city. It doesn't do much for the alcoholic."

Polin knows what she's talking about.

She is a recovering alcoholic. She also is the director of world services for Oxford House, the drug and alcohol recovery program that has 900 self-supported home-centers in 44 states in our country, as well as in Canada and Australia.

Washington state, it turns out, has the largest number of Oxford Houses anywhere, at 102.

The Oxford model, widely praised, has three key rules.

Residents have to remain sober, and they can stay as long as they need to.

They have to get a job and pay the rent, which is about $280 a month.

They must respect in-house democracy: All residents are considered equal and 80 percent of people in a house must approve of a newcomer. That gives the majority of residents a big stake in the new person's recovery.

It's about individual accountability as well as responsibility to the group -- the things that appear to be lacking in the Seattle housing project.

The Eastlake plan is not a "silver bullet," concedes Bill Hobson, executive director of the Downtown Emergency Services Center.

The non-profit social-service agency would build and manage the planned Eastlake building. "But it's a start."

A start to what, Bill?

Warehousing drunks?

A Southern Comfort Inn?

Other critics of "moist housing" are lining up. But not all of them, as they well should, have the long-term interests of chronic inebriates at heart.

Those naysayers are part of the NIMBY brigade -- Not In My Back Yard. They fear that if the housing is built -- the plan calls for 75 studio apartments -- the drunks will come, bottles a-jangling.

Before you know it, there goes the neighborhood.

Public urination. Panhandling and noise. Broken glass.

There may be a kernel of truth in those concerns, though Seattle has had housing projects for chronic alcoholics -- the Wintonia on Capitol Hill comes to mind -- and no doomsday scenarios have unfolded there.

But that's not the main point. This is: Alcoholism kills.

It's also treatable. Sufferers can live normal lives if they abstain and, most importantly, if they receive counseling and sustained, tough love.

What are we saying as a society if we spend millions to push drunks behind closed doors, out of public view and then allow them to sip their lives away?

The answer, if we're being honest, is as sad as the devastation of the powerful drinking disease.

P-I columnist Robert L. Jamieson Jr. can be reached at 206-448-8125 or robertjamieson@seattlepi.com

Add Robert Jamieson headlines to