{"id":90,"date":"2006-07-24T21:05:13","date_gmt":"2006-07-25T02:05:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/weeklyrob.dreamhosters.com\/?p=90"},"modified":"2006-07-24T21:05:13","modified_gmt":"2006-07-25T02:05:13","slug":"90","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/?p=90","title":{"rendered":"The Poor, the Addicted, the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Unsympathetic\u00e2\u20ac\u009d"},"content":{"rendered":"

I got into a bit of a debate on Feministe<\/a> about a program than aims to pay addicts to get birth control. The whole post and articles about the program are there, so I won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t go into it here.<\/p>\n

[Except to say that while the attention is all about paying addicts to get their tubes tied, the program also covers shorter term birth control. I said this about nine million times over there, and I started to bore even myself.]<\/p>\n

But it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s interesting to find unusual, edgy, possibly offensive solutions to old problems. In Seattle, they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve come up with another one: 1811 Eastlake. (See the project\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Web page<\/a> and scroll down for all sorts of good and bad press about it.)<\/p>\n

Apparently, the city of Seattle found that they spend huge amounts of money caring for hardcore, homeless alcoholics. The money spent in emergency room care and jail cells averaged about $50,000 for the worst of the worst.<\/p>\n

Typical shelters and programs didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t seem to do the trick, so they came up with 1811 Eastlake, which is now home for something over 70 people.<\/p>\n

How is it different? At Eastlake, no one stops you from drinking in your room or anywhere else. You get a room, or at least a bed (depending on your health and other factors), and you do what you want.<\/p>\n

So. Is this ok? Taxpayers pay much less money, and the people are no longer living on the street, but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hard to accept that the best plan is to give people a bed, without any kind of program to help them with addiction, and assume they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll stay there until they die.<\/p>\n

Not to mention the violation of the whole \u00e2\u20ac\u0153work-ethic\u00e2\u20ac\u009d thing, where people expect to do something for their home. If these people can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even be asked to stop doing the self-destructive thing that put them on the streets in the first place, why do they get a free place to live?<\/p>\n

On the other hand, isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t it best to face reality? These people are chosen for being the worst of the worst. They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve all failed programs before, several times. They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve all been homeless for years. Shouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t we just admit that some people aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t going to get better?<\/p>\n

And if they aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t getting better, then isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t better for everyone else to get them off the streets? I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not worried that people will say, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153hey, why should I stop drinking and get my life together? If I keep up the head injuries and jail time, I may get a free place to stay!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d So it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not exactly as though we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re encouraging the behavior.<\/p>\n

I think that I fall on the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153face reality\u00e2\u20ac\u009d side. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not as though other programs haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t been tried. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not completely giving up. But if programs aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t working, it may be better for everyone, including the homeless alcoholics in question, to at least give them a place to sleep. As one of the residents says, when asked about drinking in the home, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153we’re going to drink somewhere.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I got into a bit of a debate on Feministe about a program than aims to pay addicts to get birth control. The whole post and articles about the program are there, so I won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t go into it here. [Except to say that while the attention is all about paying addicts to get their tubes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-90","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humanity","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=90"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=90"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=90"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=90"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}