At the Town and Country Club in St. Paul, millionaires spend summer afternoons sipping drinks on a patio.

Less than a mile away, another patio is full of another kind of million-dollar man.

“I drink beer now. Whiskey makes you ornery,” said Wayne Britton, 59, who sips his suds on the drinking patio of the St. Anthony Residence.

The alcohol in his oversized bottle costs $4. The alcohol in his life, much more.

Like his drinking buddies, Britton has been destitute for years. So the costs of his decades of alcoholism have been borne by the public — likely about $1.5 million for time in jail, court, hospitals, detox and rehabilitation.

But while the drinking binges continue for Britton and the 59 other alcoholics at St. Anthony, the spending binges have ended. The St. Paul “wet house” is slashing the public’s financial burden for those men by more than 80 percent — saving about $5 million a year.

In a sense, St. Anthony wins the war against alcoholism by surrendering. The facility does what no treatment program will do — allow some of the state’s worst drunks to keep drinking.

That’s how it inspires their respect. Once the street drunks have food, housing and alcohol, they almost completely stop the barroom fights, the drunken driving, the late-night trips to emergency rooms.

“You have a place to live and a place to drink,” said Britton, who is wiry from riding his 20-mile daily bicycle route to collect cans. “How are you going to get into trouble?”

Some experts say Minnesota’s four “wet houses” — in St. Paul, Minneapolis and Duluth — are inhumane because they offer alcoholics little hope of recovery. Others argue that it’s compassionate to house drunks who would otherwise be homeless.

While the morality is debatable, the savings are not.

The worst alcoholics cost the public an average of $100,000 a year, according to St. Anthony Residence manager Bill Hockenberger.

Week after week, they steal booze, stagger into hospitals, panhandle on sidewalks, vomit in bus stops and pass out on park benches.

And society is powerless to stop them.

Consider Marion Hagerman. In his 39 years of drinking, the 54-year-old has been arrested about 60 times. He has kept drinking despite six drunken-driving convictions and six 28-day treatment sessions.

His drinking has cost the public more than $450,000. And since he was admitted to St. Anthony’s two years ago?

Nothing. Not a single arrest, detox stay or emergency-room visit.

It’s not that he’s turned his life around — he still drinks mouthwash, which he stashes in a nearby Dumpster. But he has drastically cut his cost to the public.

“I use to stumble around and make a fool of myself outside,” said Hagerman, as he relit a day-old cigarette butt in his bare room. “But now I go home and do it here.”

The same thing has happened to Britton, a 12-time DWI offender.

The world has thrown everything imaginable at him — shame, guilt, homelessness, treatments and even 16 years in jail. Nothing can stop him from drinking.

“When a guy’s gotta drink, he’s gotta drink,” said Britton. “He don’t care about the consequences. Jail? Sure! Lock me up!”

It wasn’t jail that made the difference, but wet houses. Since he was admitted to one six years ago, before being transferred to St. Anthony, Britton has been drinking as much as ever.

But he has stopped driving, refuses to beg for money, has stayed out of jail and detox. He’s had only two hospital visits, for pneumonia.

“I like it here,” he said.

A LITTLE HOSPITAL REST

Homeless alcoholics are walking sinkholes of medical costs.

Their lives are a parade of ambulance rides, emergency-room visits, hospital stays and psychiatric treatments.

Some use emergency rooms twice a week, according to a 2009 study in San Francisco. The same study said the worst homeless alcoholics averaged nine ambulance trips per year.

Against this onslaught, hospitals are helpless. By law, they must treat anyone for any condition — real or imagined, preventable or not.

“Some go to the ER for a hangnail,” said Jim Gillham, the St. Anthony service coordinator.

Or because of boredom. Or loneliness.

“They go to get out of the cold for four hours,” Gillham said. “They sit and watch TV.”

Or because they forgot to take their medicine. Homeless diabetics, for example, besiege emergency rooms, with ailments caused by neglecting their prescriptions.

The national average for an emergency-room visit is about $3,700. Charity care by Minnesota hospitals — for costs such as alcoholic walk-ins — swelled to $165 million in 2008, according to the Minnesota Hospital Association.

As the drunks rack up enormous medical bills, there are no brakes in the system. No one suggests they stop drinking, find housing where they won’t destroy themselves, or try to prevent the next “emergency.”

So the costs pile up faster than a wino’s bar tab.

“Say a good Samaritan sees a drunk who has fallen in the park. The ambulance arrives — $800 to $1,200,” Gillham said. The alcoholic might then be admitted to a hospital — for about $1,700 per day.

“Or they go to a psych ward. All you have to do is say, ‘I’m having delusions’ or ‘I’m thinking of killing myself,’ ” Gillham said. “It’s a seven-day vacation with room service and a nurse.”

HOSPITAL USERS PAY THE BILL

Other times, the world’s best medical care flows to the world’s worst patients.

Phil Brendale, a 50-year-old homeless alcoholic, was kicked out of St. Anthony in 2001 for breaking house rules. He now lives in a wooded area near the Capitol.

Recently he walked into an emergency room at St. Joseph’s Hospital, worried about rectal bleeding. He was given an MRI to see what was wrong, but he never went back for the results.

“I know what they’re going to tell me — quit drinking, quit smoking. You might as well tell me to quit breathing,” Brendale said. “One day, we’re all going to die. So, let me die happy.”

Doctors, of course, point out that illnesses and costs only escalate with delays.

Gillham said that four years ago, a local drunk passed out in a snow bank, was rushed by ambulance to a hospital and went through surgery to save his hands. He languished in intensive care for 10 days.

The cost — easily in the several tens of thousands — was passed along to hospital users who pay their bills.

If that drunk had been a St. Anthony resident, Gillham said, he probably would have just collapsed in his own bed.

And he would have had the care of an in-house nurse. The nurse knows the men and can tell the exaggerated complaints from real problems. She fixes minor injuries, such as the toe Hagerman broke in November, kicking a wall in a mouthwash-induced stupor. She remembers their medications, even when they do not.

The men appreciate the care — so are less likely to be self-destructive, saving even more money.

“They have someone there to love them through all that, not casting judgment or casting blame,” said Katie Tuione, a program manager at the Dorothy Day Center, a homeless shelter.

“When they say, ‘I am living the way I want to live,’ and you honor that, they say, ‘Thank you.’ ”

One November morning, Hagerman downed a 40-ounce can of an 11 percent-alcohol beer called Ax Handle, then limped to his room.

With bloodshot eyes, he looked at the second toe on his right foot, swollen and purple. He had broken it a few days before, kicking a wall in a drunken rage.

In the past, he would have gone to an emergency room. But the house nurse patched it up in a few minutes.

Hagerman was grateful. “It’s good to help a person,” he said.

DETOX AS HOTEL

Judges often send alcoholics to treatment — which the men of St. Anthony say is obscenely expensive and a waste of time.

Standard four-week programs usually cost about $25,000 but can run as high as $40,000. The average St. Anthony client has been through treatment six times.

St. Anthony doesn’t force counseling on drunks who won’t listen. For burned-out veterans of multiple failed treatments, the no-counseling approach is the only one they tolerate.

To them, drinking is as essential as breathing. “If this place closed, I would be back under the bridge in Swede Hollow,” said Paul Schiller, a five-year alcoholic.

The St. Anthony residents say that when treatment fails, they fall easily into the detox habit.

Detox is meant to be a refuge for alcoholics, where they can dry out. But St. Paul’s street drunks treat the Ramsey County detox like a free hotel — always open for a shower, bed and food.

The lifetime bill? For some alcoholics, it’s more than $200,000.

Since 1980, several clients have used detox more than 900 times, according to Pete Bieri, Ramsey County detox social worker. One visit costs about $230.

“We have clients who have virtually lived there,” staying in detox four days a week, said St. Anthony’s Gillham.

It’s another expense eliminated by wet houses. Every drunk knows there is no point in going to detox for what they already have at St. Anthony.

NO MORE CRIME

Ultimately, many homeless drinkers commit crimes — theft, assaults, drunken driving. Jail keeps them from drinking, at a cost of about $30,000 a year.

But almost all crime ends at St. Anthony.

Drunken driving, for example, is the most common crime among residents — many have more than five convictions. But with room and board provided, the men can live without cars — they don’t need to drive to work, to shop or to socialize.

Not one of them owns a car. Instead, they ride bikes. The facility has a largely empty parking lot, but the bike corral is packed with about 50 bicycles.

None of them can afford a car, having sold off the last of their possessions for alcohol.

Hagerman, a six-time drunken-driving convict, was asked why he has hasn’t had any more arrests. He looked around his room at everything he owned — a toothbrush, three disposable razors, a bag of tobacco and some clothes.

A car? He might as well dream of owning a Learjet.

“It’s a good thing I don’t have a car,” he said. “I would just get into trouble.”

Life at St. Anthony Residence might seem grim to outsiders, but from an accountant’s point of view it looks beautiful.

The wet house costs the public about $18,000 annually per homeless alcoholic.

It saves on the whole range of invisible expenses — even welfare. Once in St. Anthony, alcoholics have their Ramsey County welfare cut by more than half, to $89 a month.

The approach is so effective that wet houses are being considered in Olmsted County, the Fargo-Moorhead area and Sioux Falls, S.D., according to manager Hockenberger.

When they are not constantly getting into trouble or getting hurt, the men have time to think.

One dreary November day, Hagerman stared out his window at the clouds collecting like dust balls on the horizon.

He recalled how his mother used to tell him he could grow up to be the president. Instead, he grew up to live in a small concrete cell, obsessed with how he will be able to get his next drink.

“What do I do this for? I ask myself this,” he said, words slurred by beer. “Then I do it anyway.”

Bob Shaw can be reached at 651-228-5433.