Tax $$ Hard at Work!

[SuperScout]

Seattle to build apartments for drunks
Offering tax-funded food, services, place to imbibe together

? 2003 WorldNetDaily.com

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.

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.

[I wonder if any of these non-profit geniuses ever heard of AA. Maybe they might be enlightened if they read a little of the Big Book and see if abstinence just might be part of the answer to solving one's problem with alcohol. And if the city merchants don't want this Easy Street facility in their neighborhood, I wonder if the non-profit/city administrators would want the tax-payer debacle in their neighborhood?]

[Jerry D]

Ken Schram and Kathy Goertzen on Ch4 always had a good news cast while I was stationed in Tacoma,WA and I am glad to Hear Ken is still speaking his mind

[BLUEHAWK]

Scout -
Well, I guess they forgot about contempt before investigation, so they're gonna hafta get their larnin' after the fact and by doing the same thing the same way expecting different results, eh?

Idiots...