Assembly OKs rules for locating housing for alcoholics

The Rural Community Action Program, a private agency that works with homeless alcoholics, is trying to buy the Red Roof Inn motel to make it a place where homeless inebriates could live without having to quit drinking. The idea is to put chronic alcoholics into healthier situations, and cut the cost of services for them at the same time.

The ordinance the Assembly passed sets up requirements for a public hearing and approval by the city Planning and Zoning Commission before projects like that could be approved. The ordinance also aims to keep them at a distance from other alcoholic housing and from parks and schools, but the commission could decide how close in individual situations. The law also requires them to be in commercial or industrial districts, and not in residential areas,

Melinda Freemon, director of the Rural Community Action Program's Anchorage division, spoke in favor of the ordinance. With supervision and controls, she said, "This type of housing works."

"It's about a solution that may save some of these people, but even if you don't, it keeps them out of public places," and maybe jail, said Assemblyman Dan Coffey, who supported the ordinance.

But Coffey also argued for doing it cautiously, with management plans that tell what kind of rules the tenants of a specific project would have to follow, and give community councils plenty of opportunity to comment and review the management plans. That provision was included in the ordinance.

There's been plenty of opposition to converting the Red Roof Inn to alcoholic housing. The Fairview Community Council voted to oppose it. Residents said they worried those housed would cause more problems in the Fairview area.

Until now, there's been no city law governing where such housing can be placed. That fact prompted Assembly members to try to come up with a way to regulate housing for severe alcoholics.

In a hearing at a February Assembly meeting, Tom McGrath, who has a business in Spenard, said the city shouldn't allow more facilities for alcoholics in the downtown area, including Fairview, which is next to downtown. He thinks there are too many facilities for alcoholics in that area already. "If it were me, I would designate it could not be in the downtown core."

Testimony Tuesday was mostly about proposed amendments that would set, for example, how close to a park such a facility could be, and how large an alcoholic housing project would have to be before the new regulations would kick in.