Chronic drunks’ treatment costs S.F. big bucks:
San Francisco has paid at least $150,000 for Kenny Walters in the past year. He isn’t employed, has an arrest record as long as his hair, and can often be found passed out in a doorway on Haight Street.Kenny Walters’ job is to get drunk.
He’s certainly not alone. “Chronic inebriants” are a grim and disturbing fact of life in San Francisco. They also cost the city millions.
The frustration is that the public service network – police, fire and medical professionals – doesn’t seem to make a dent when it comes to people like Walters. There are suggestions, like a pilot program for high-impact users at the Department of Public Health, or the Community Justice Center to target frequent users, but nothing seems to get traction.
A five-year study found that 225 high ambulance users cost the city an average of $13 million annually, said Maria X. Martinez, a deputy director at the Department of Public Health.
…Recently Walters, who came from Arizona a year and a half ago, was curled up in the fetal position on the sidewalk near Masonic and Haight. Tourists with a camera walked past him; some peered down to see if he was breathing.
“Basically he comes out here and drinks himself to this point every day,” police Officer John Andrews said. “It’s like the movie ‘Leaving Las Vegas,’ ” in which where Nicolas Cage’s character goes to Las Vegas to drink himself to death.
