CHICAGO (Reuters) - A program that gives shelter to homeless alcoholics but allows them to keep drinking and not be forced into treatment could save taxpayers millions in public costs, according to a study published on Tuesday.
The study also found that daily alcohol consumption fell by 2 percent per month for those in the shelter.
The results were based on a look at 95 people admitted to a program in Seattle called Housing First from 2005 to 2007. They were compared with others who were still on the street and on waiting lists to get into the shelter.
"Our study suggests that homeless alcoholics who qualify to take part in Housing First can stay out of jails and (hospital) emergency rooms and cost the taxpayer a lot less money as a result," said Mary Larimer, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of Washington, who led the study.
"We also found that these benefits increase over time and that they are possible without requiring that participants stop drinking. And yet, the longer the participants stay in the housing program, the less they drink," Larimer said.
The report was published in this week's Journal of the American Medical Association.
After 12 months in the shelter the total public costs relating to the care of the 95 individuals was cut by more than $4 million compared to the year before, the researchers said.
MORE THAN $4,000 EACH
In the year before entering the shelter, those who got in had run up more than $4,000 each per month in costs for jail, detox center use, hospital-based medical services, publicly funded alcohol and drug programs, emergency medical services and the like, the study team said.
But after they entered the housing arrangement, their individual monthly costs for using such services fell to $1,492 after six months and to $958 after a year -- a reduction in total costs of more than $4 million, the researchers said.
"Each of them had cost state and local governments an average of $86,062 per year before being housed, compared to an average of $13,440 it costs per person per year to administer the housing program," Larimer said.
Housing First is a concept employed in a number of cities across the country to address the needs of the homeless generally. Such programs rely on a mix of private and public funding, according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness.
The authors of the study said such programs so far have generally been used for homeless people with severe mental illness and concurrent substance abuse. The Seattle shelter, called 1811 Eastlake, has been controversial because it allows drinking on the premises, the research team said, in a program where meals, shelter and other cost ran $1,120 per person monthly during the study.
The study said the median number of drinks for participants started at 15.7 a day but fell to 14, 12 and 10 a day at after six, nine and 12 months, respectively.
William Hobson, executive director of the group that runs the Seattle project, said the stable housing environment is a factor in reduced drinking. He said there also were discussions of the problem with residents, which leads to reassessment of drinking.
Legalising Marijuana Reduces Rate of Drunk Driving
The passage of state medical-marijuana laws is associated with a subsequent drop in the rate of traffic fatalities, according to a newly released study by two university professors. The study suggests legalizing marijuana would be beneficial in unexpected ways."People who are drinking drive faster, take more risks, underestimate how impaired they are."
The study - by University of Colorado Denver professor Daniel Rees and Montana State University professor D. Mark Anderson - found that the traffic-death rate drops by nearly 9 percent in states after they legalize marijuana for medical use. The researchers arrived at that figure, Rees said, after controlling for other variables such as changes in traffic laws, seat-belt usage and miles driven. The study stops short of saying the medical-marijuana laws cause the drop in traffic deaths.
"We were pretty surprised that they went down," Rees said Tuesday.
The study was posted this month on the website of the Bonn, Germany- based Institute for the Study of Labor and has not yet been peer-reviewed.
Rees said the main reason for the drop appears to be that medical-marijuana laws mean young people spend less time drinking and more time smoking cannabis. Legalization of medical marijuana, the researchers report, is associated with a 12-percent drop in the alcohol-related fatal-crash rate and a 19-percent decrease in the fatality rate of people in their 20s, according to the study.
The study also found that medical- marijuana legalization is associated with a drop in beer sales.
"The result that comes through again and again and again is (that) young adults . . . drink less when marijuana is legalized and traffic fatalities go down," Rees said.
Much of that debate has focused on marijuana's impact on an individual's driving abilities. Rees and Anderson say their study does not mean it is safer to drive stoned than drunk. Instead, they write, increased medical-marijuana usage at home might change patterns of substance use and driving.