The Bright Side
Comments about New Life Lodge, the halfway house located near the western edge of Lake Geneva, just keep pouring in. What’s really going on over at that Halfway House and why is it important to the City of Lake Geneva? Because it’s basically in the city, although technically in the Town of Geneva since it sits on the weird north western edge of Highway H just before you leave town. That’s close. Close enough that problems occurring there are problems the City of Lake Geneva is going to be saddled with.
Forget the Town of Geneva. All they get is the tax money. All the expenses land on Lake Geneva’s broad shoulders. Why is the place important for what it is? Because people can go there, get some sort of regular treatment for substance abuse, a warm bed and protection from the elements as long as they obey the rules. It costs about seventeen bucks a day. How’s that for an alternative to living on the streets, which is pretty damned tough during Lake Geneva’s long winter? That’s important.
But the downside? The place is filled with addicts trying to stay sober and there is a high relapse rate, with many of them failing to make it. That means having more drugs and alcohol abuse going on nearby, than statistically likely in other places. So, it’s a trade-off. It’s hard to pick on the owners, even when things go wrong, because they aren’t getting inmates out of institutions, for the most part, and making big bucks because of outrageous fees. So what are they in it for? So far the GSR investigators have only interviewed the manager, who came off as a pretty squared away dude and smart. Smart and likable and a recovered addict himself, so nobody is likely to pull the wool over his eyes.
There have been some problems at this generous and rather compassionate structure, but so far the positives seem to outweigh the negatives by some good margin. The GSR is going to continue to monitor the situation, to see what happens as times goes by.
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Person of the Week
As adults we sometimes forget to live in the moment and enjoy all the little neat things around us. This grand little one-year-old veteran of living in Lake Geneva, Everleigh Stack, makes it look easy. The GSR staff picked her as the Grandest Person of the Week because they couldn’t help it.
