CSP, Featured

HOUSING FIRST REQUIRES A SPONSOR

Any effort to bring permanent housing to Fairbanks’ chronically inebriated people will require a sponsor agency – not a loose consortium of players.  That was the “aha” upshot from a field trip to tour Seattle’s 1811 Eastlake, the first housing project in America to house the highest consumers of emergency services without making that housing a condition of clinical success – that is, the residents at 1811 Eastlake don’t have to stop drinking. 

It’s a path-of-least-resistance approach with fans in Fairbanks once you consider that we pay to keep chronically inebriated people ON the streets with highly trained police, emergency personnel, and the emergency room.  It is cheaper, according to an article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, to house the most down-and-out chronic inebriates. 

The field trip was paid for by the Alaska Mental Health Trust.  The Fairbanks delegation joined an Anchorage delegation seeking answers to concerns about the housing first project proposed in Anchorage’s Fairview neighborhood. 

 Author’s note:  I believe Fairview’s concerns about a “party house” had good answers:

1. A facility’s ability to be a good neighbor relies on skilled management that engages with the surrounding community; 
2. “Aggressive engagement”  by the facility staff and time-tested addendums to their lease contract both protect residents from victimization and furnish strong levers to influence positive behavior in the neighborhood;
3. The population at Eastlake is medically fragile from years of substance abuse;
4. Residents tend to isolate in their room rather than carouse.   

Related:

1. ‘Housing First’ for chronic inebriates could work in Fairbanks
2. Financing “housing first” for chronic inebriates
3. A MEASURABLE IMPROVEMENT
4. Downtown Brings Homeless Problem into Focus
5. CITY STEPPING-UP ON COMMUNITY SERVICE PATROL