The Downtown Emergency Service Center (DESC) is a non-profit organization

Non-profit organization

Nonprofit organization is neither a legal nor technical definition but generally refers to an organization that uses surplus revenues to achieve its goals, rather than distributing them as profit or dividends...

 in Seattle, Washington

Seattle, Washington

Seattle is the county seat of King County, Washington. With 608,660 residents as of the 2010 Census, Seattle is the largest city in the Northwestern United States. The Seattle metropolitan area of about 3.4 million inhabitants is the 15th largest metropolitan area in the country...

 providing services for that city's homeless

Homelessness

Homelessness describes the condition of people without a regular dwelling. People who are homeless are unable or unwilling to acquire and maintain regular, safe, and adequate housing, or lack "fixed, regular, and adequate night-time residence." The legal definition of "homeless" varies from country...

 population. The organization focuses on providing basic services for those homeless men and women who are vulnerable due to such factors as mental illness

Mental illness

A mental disorder or mental illness is a psychological or behavioral pattern generally associated with subjective distress or disability that occurs in an individual, and which is not a part of normal development or culture. Such a disorder may consist of a combination of affective, behavioural,...

 and addiction

Substance dependence

The section about substance dependence in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders does not use the word addiction at all. It explains:...

, as well as HIV

HIV

Human immunodeficiency virus is a lentivirus that causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome , a condition in humans in which progressive failure of the immune system allows life-threatening opportunistic infections and cancers to thrive...

 and other infections. In the 1980s the center was funded by the city of Seattle through block-grant money, the county, which supports mental-health case manager positions, the United Way, churches (providing volunteers), businesses and individual donors. 230 people sleep in the two open rooms.

History

In the late 1970s, Seattle's Downtown Human Service Council Group expressed concern to Seattle's mayor that there were increases in homelessness and that the mentally ill were not getting the services they needed. Because of these concerns, the mayor's office, the Church Council of Seattle and other groups opened the center in 1979.

1811 Eastlake project

DESC invented and developed the 1811 Eastlake project, named after its location, which houses 75 formerly homeless alcoholics, mostly at public expense. A 2006 released study found that 1811 Eastlake improved residents' lives and it actually saved Seattle more than $2 million a year.

External links

• Official website
• DESC Profile from Action Without Borders
  Action Without Borders
  Action Without Borders is an international nonprofit organization founded in 1995 and based in the USA. The organization currently runs the Idealist.org, Idealistas.org and Idéaliste.org websites...
  
  
• Grantee information from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development
  United States Department of Housing and Urban Development
  The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development, also known as HUD, is a Cabinet department in the Executive branch of the United States federal government...