Sky-high bill likely for halfway house

The construction blueprints call for a windowless box of a building with a courtyard surrounded by an eight-foot concrete wall, protecting the public from the building's residents — and vice versa.

It is an unusual design for a unique project. The halfway house, hunkered beneath the West Seattle Bridge, will be the state's first attempt to return sexually violent predators to society.

Should the first two men move in next summer as planned, the state will have 22 employees on staff to greet them. Each man is projected to cost $1 million a year, most of it for security around the clock.

Given the public's outrage over the project, the precautions are wise, said Bob Hubenthal, capital-projects director for the Department of Social and Health Services.

"We didn't want an opportunity for anyone passing by on the [West Seattle] viaduct or the street to take potshots at the facility," he said.

The sexually violent predators at the halfway house, in a remodeled building at 132 S. Spokane St., will be among the first to graduate from the state's treatment program, the Special Commitment Center on McNeil Island.

Their return to society will be later and more expensive than initially planned.

The DSHS bumped back the move-in date by three months, when a round of bids for an elaborate security system came in $415,000 higher than projections. A second round of bidding opened last week.

The project budget also increased when DSHS settled a lawsuit with the city of Seattle for $375,000. The agreement includes money for round-the-clock police patrols at the site, as well as for better streetlights and an extra detective for the sex-offender squad. It even includes $25,000 for therapy for neighbors traumatized by the halfway house.

In exchange, DSHS got the city's cooperation with construction permits.

"It's not ho-hum to have violent sexual predators in the city, but given the security provided in the facility and the security going to be provided in the area, we've done what we can to mitigate their presence," said Edsonya Charles, an adviser to Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels.

The halfway house has a tangled legal history. In 1999, eight years after the McNeil Island center opened, U.S. District Court Judge William Dwyer ordered DSHS to create a release process for graduates, lest the center be considered unconstitutional, indefinite confinement.

The agency built a halfway house on the sparsely populated island, but Dwyer ruled that did not meet the definition of reintegration. The first resident of the island halfway house also cost about $1 million a year.

In contrast, a patient at Western State Hospital costs about $150,000 a year; a prison inmate costs about $25,000.

The Sodo halfway house is the first attempt to locate graduates off the island. After considering four other sites in King County last year, DSHS signed a five-year, $12,450-a-month lease for the Sodo building.

The first two residents haven't been picked yet, said Beverly Wilson, a DSHS official leading the halfway-house project. Two other residents are expect to move into the halfway house sometime in 2006, dropping the per-resident costs.

The costs are high in part because the Legislature ordered an exhaustive security system, including one-on-one security when residents leave the halfway house for work, school or therapy, as well as GPS monitoring bracelets and locked and alarm-equipped doors.

The halfway-house costs are "just unbelievable," said John Phillips, a Seattle lawyer who represents Special Commitment Center residents.

"But you can't really slap the hands of the bureaucrats who run the program," he said. "It's really expensive because the Legislature has imposed these extraordinary security burdens that go beyond even the recommendations" of treatment professionals.

Earlier this summer, DSHS was relieved of one financial burden. U.S. District Court Judge Robert Lasnik waived $11 million in fines accrued because of DSHS' slow progress in building a halfway house. But court oversight will continue until Lasnik is satisfied the release program is completed.

Once the first residents are in, DSHS faces other challenges. Before a sexually violent predator can get a job, he must tell potential co-workers about his status and convictions. That has kept all six of the halfway-house residents on McNeil Island from getting jobs, said Wilson, the DSHS official.

Should the Sodo halfway-house residents find jobs, they'll chip in 15 percent of their wages toward their costs. But it's not clear yet if they'll find willing employers in Seattle.

"We're in the process of putting together the budget," Wilson said. "It continues to grow."

Jonathan Martin: 206-464-2605 or jmartin@seattletimes.com