Friday, April 10, 2009

Liberal Agenda Saves Money

Having worked in the mental health/social work field for a couple of decades, I know all too well that one of the favorite targets at tax cutting time is social programs. The vitriol coming from the right wing about these programs is overwhelming at times.

They would rather cut every single social program in the interest of "saving tax payer money" so that they can keep the tax cuts for the rich to become richer. But they never once look at the cost of their spending cuts.

A fine example of this is a story that recently appeared in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. The story is about a type of group home, or halfway house, that opened in Seattle. The program was called the 1811 program, and it was subjected to a lot of controversy, open skepticism and years of protests. The reason for the controversy was that it provided housing and services, but did not demand total sobriety from the residents.

The result of this program, when is was finally allowed to launch, was remarkable (emphasis mine):
Porter's progress is echoed in a study published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The study, led by a University of Washington researcher, found that the once-controversial 1811 program -- which provides housing and services without demanding sobriety -- saved taxpayers more than $4 million in one year.

[...]

Researchers followed 95 chronically homeless alcoholics, who, before moving into the home, had run up a taxpayer bill of $8.2 million in hospitalizations, emergency services, jail time and sobering center visits.

After one year of being in the program, the same group cost taxpayers only $4 million, the study found. Each resident also drank less the longer they lived in the home, and their toll on publicly funded programs decreased as time went on.

[...]

Larimer also compared residents against a control group of 39 homeless alcoholics on a wait-list to get into the home. She found that the residents, after six months of being in the home, cost taxpayers 50 percent less than the wait-listed group.
I can understand why some people would be against the idea of using tax payer dollars to house alcoholics and drug addicts, especially if they are not required to be clean. But the simple fact of the matter is that these people would continue to use whether the housing was provided or not, and that would cost the taxpayers a lot more than this program does.

The same principal applies to the mentally ill. If you take away some of these people's most basic concerns and stressors, like exposure to inclement weather or extreme hunger, they are able to focus on other parts of their lives, reducing their need to use alcohol and drugs, and hopefully become productive citizens again.

Unfortunately, it makes for a sexier and easier to understand soundbite for a politician to act tough on these souls, than to do the right thing.

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