ScienceDaily (Jan. 19, 2012) — A study of a controversial housing project that allows chronically homeless people with severe alcohol problems to drink in their apartments found that during their first two years in the building residents cut their heavy drinking by 35 percent.

For every three months during the study, participants drank an average of 8 percent fewer drinks on their heaviest drinking days.

They also had fewer instances of delirium tremens, a life-threatening form of alcohol withdrawal. The American Journal of Public Health published the findings Jan. 19.

Housing for chronically homeless people usually comes with many conditions, including abstinence from drugs and alcohol and compliance with psychiatric and substance abuse treatment. But such requirements can become barriers to staying in housing.

"These individuals have multiple medical, psychiatric and substance abuse problems, and housing that requires them to give up their belongings, adhere to curfews, stop drinking and commit to treatment all at once is setting them up to fail. The result is that we are relegating some of the most vulnerable people in our community to a life on the streets," said Susan Collins, lead author and UW research assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences.