All you have to do is prove you are the biggest drunk in the city, and they'll pay your rent!
Seriously, someone explain this **** to me. I live in this state and I still don't get it. I think its time I take up drinking.
http://komonews.com/news/story.asp?ID=40781
75 Of City's Worst Drunks Will Get New Digs
December 15, 2005
By Bryan Johnson
Video : KOMO 4 NEWS
City, county and federal officials helped officially dedicate a most unusual Seattle apartment building and social experiment Thursday.
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SEATTLE - City, county and federal officials helped officially dedicate a most unusual Seattle apartment building and social experiment Thursday.
The 75-unit apartment house on Fairview Avenue is reserved for 75 of the city's most expensive street alcoholics. Hospitals, detox facilities, sobering centers, social workers and others are being asked to identify the 100 most costly (to the taxpayers) street alcoholics.
The apartment center will allow consumption of alcohol on the premise, and the experiment will be tracked by the University of Washington.
There will be nurses and other staff on duty, but the residents will be allowed to come and go.
They will sign pledges of appropriate behavior and the management, and Seattle's Downtown Emergency Services has the ability to terminate the rental agreement in the case of violations.
The facility is expected to open in January.
"This is a group of people that, for the most part, are never going to get sober," said Bill Hobson of Downtown Emergency Services. "And the way we are dealing with them now, leaving on the street is a very expensive form of benign neglect."
Many may think Bill Hobson for trying to sign up 75 chronic alcoholics who cost the city tens of thousands of dollars each year, rather than selecting people with a greater chance of going sober.
They'll live in 49 apartments and management will tell them yes, you can drink here. There are 26 smaller units for those with severe medical problems.
But why do this?
Hobson says: "They are dying on the streets. They are dying in greater numbers than any other subset of people in the homeless population in Seattle and King County."
Hobson is a social worker. But, neighbors -- the owners of the Metropolitan Towers and Northwest Trophy -- don't share his philosophy. Robb Anderson put it this way: "It's not that we are against helping the people, it's the effect it's going to have on a small family run business that's been in the city for 68 years."
Anderson says the value of his property has dropped 50 percent as a result of uncertainty caused by the project.
They lost the court battle. So, the apartment house was dedicated.
Cody Davis worries too; he has a music studio next door: "Just the number of drunks and drug addicts you have to chase off your steps on a daily basis. I see the way places like that have affected the area I guess."
But Hobson says behavior will be closely monitored, and if there are incidents his staff will respond and take appropriate action. Police have also told the merchants and others call 911, and they will patrol the area.
And, Hobson says, there are practical reasons to support the project: "They are consuming extraordinary amounts of police time, of court time, and it is an irrational waste of taxpayer dollars."
Some of the chronic street alcoholics make 30 trips a year to Harborview Medical Center. The cost of visits to jails, hospitals, and dry outs $100,000 a year per person.
Ed Dwyer-O'Connell, the manager of psychiatric emergency services at Harborview, adds: "Living on the streets of Seattle, it's not a way for us to treat our fellow man to just leave them in the gutter... they have a disease."
Eventually, 75 alcoholics will live in the building. The first four signed up Thursday, they'll move in about Jan. 1.