A project by Seattle city officials to house chronic alcoholics in a 75-unit apartment building where they can drink together has been approved by the Washington state Court of Appeals.
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The $8.6 million project near downtown Seattle will offer tenants meals and support services in an attempt to provide enough stability to allow them to attend treatment programs, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported.
In response, veteran Seattle commentator Ken Schram of KOMO-TV said he wished “we could take city officials to court simply for being stupid.”
“If someone can explain to me how it helps to give alcoholics a cozy place to booze it up, I’d like to hear it,” Schram said in an editorial.
“What’s next?” he asked, “An ‘honor bar’ in their rooms.”
The Seattle paper said the project will be built and managed with state, county and federal funding.
Local businesses are opposing the project, contending it will drive away business and residents, noting street alcoholics are commonly regarded as detrimental to a neighborhood.
At a hearing last year, however, a city official rejected that argument.
City Hearing Examiner Meredith Getches found that behaviors of chronic alcoholics who live on the streets can change once they have a stable home, the Seattle Times reported in November.
“Formerly homeless [chronic alcoholics] can be good neighbors and do not have those serious and harmful impacts on a neighborhood,” Getches wrote.
Opponents hoped Getches would ban drinking in the building, the Times said.
But Bill Hobson, executive director of the Downtown Emergency Service Center, the nonprofit agency that would manage the apartments, insists abstinence is an unrealistic demand of alcoholics fresh off the streets.
