It's my understanding that the residents of the Old Sevier neighborhood welcomed this particular facility.

It's so sad this happened and I agree with Randy's last paragraph.

The increase in crime in South Knoxville makes me very sad. When we lived on Feather Street and Fisher Place you could walk anywhere in those areas and be safe. Kids would ride their bikes on the streets and people would watch out for them. The convenience stores at the corners of Sevier Ave./Sevierville Pike and Sevier Ave./Moody (no longer there) used to be safe hangouts. The big gash through the community really brought it down. I hope someday someone will work to make this community safe again. Who knows, maybe Helen Ross McNabb and the PSH facility will bring more attention to the area to make it safe for the families in that facility and everyone else.

Most of the recent violent crime in south Knoxville has been drug dealers attacking other drug dealers. That's regrettable, but it also means that most of us are pretty safe.

Our neighborhood did see an increase in property crime last summer, but KPD caught the guys and things were much better thereafter.

In all seriousness and honesty, I'm more than a little tired of supporters of the Ten Year Plan's efforts belittling anyone with valid concerns about the plan. It's not their fault they're uncomfortable with some of the Plan's aspects, after all.

That's how they feel and I feel comfortable stating that the vast majority of people with concerns about the plan (Peabody's crew aside - are any of those five or six people even active anymore, or did they finally have their arguments ALL shot down?) have valid concerns.

For example, the lack of a "dry" policy concerning alcohol usage on premises. If the only reason to allow that to happen is so that TYP can pull in more funding in order to build and maintain these places, then no one concerned about the lack of policy is going to buy in. And they certainly aren't buying the hands-off treatment argument because it's nowhere near as effective at treating alcoholism than a dry/abstinence policy is at treating substance abuse.

Further, allowing alcohol on premises just gives a substance abuser who may not be on alcohol the opportunity to trade one abuse problem for another. I can't see the logic in doing that, and I'm not alone in that regard.

As for the individuals who aren't alcoholics/substance abusers that would be otherwise denied the privilege of having a beer in their rooms, I'd say if that's a dealbreaker for them then they're probably not ready to get off the streets anyway. There's no sense in allowing someone that isn't an alcoholic to drink around people that are or that have other substance abuse problems. Why tempt them like that?

Let's see how long this takes to devolve into a namecalling match. Personally, I hope it doesn't, but history is what it is.

Since moving to South Knoxville recently I've heard quite a bit of history of the neighborhood from people who have lived here all their lives, and a common sentiment is that everything changed after Montgomery village was built. Now they point to this and that halfway house as a continuation of that problem. Is it really a continuation of the same problem, or are there merits to decentralizing "the problem" by integrating people that need some form of assistance or another into communities across the county instead of warehousing them together where they can be easier targets for people who prey on the weak?