California governor OKs mental health courts for homeless
abcnews.go.com
abcnews.go.com
I have lived in SF for several years and done a complete 180. The status quo is not “compassionate”, there are people who turn down help. These same individuals quite literally destroy the city. For instance, we have people sleeping and overdosing (dying) in our buildings entryway. The other week, one person defecated and smeared it on our door, lit our awning on fire, and uprooted all the landscaping and burned it. At the same time, people are selling drugs nearby and individuals are literally lined up with backpacks. There is constantly broken glass, feces, and trash spewed everywhere. Something has to change, and again lots of these people are turning down help. Right now the police state they send out the HOT (homeless outreach team) which is basically older individuals who volunteer to distribute pamphlets. If there is a crime, usually no arrest is made if the police are even able to respond. The penalties are often a misdemeanor and a fine, and not showing up to court often only results in more (effectively unenforceable) fines
It’s a fine line between “compassion” and “enabling”.
How many of these people would still be out on the street if housing was abundant and affordable? Some, maybe, but surely not most.
What if the housing was abundant and affordable but came with strings attached, like not being able to do drugs or engage in other antisocial behavior in them? Would that be a draconian policy?
Literature from people who have spoken with many of the homeless of SF suggest that "some, maybe, but surely not most" ratio is actually the other way around. People who are temporarily homeless due solely to financial factors are often able to find a home, and comprise a minority of the people you actually see on the street; and many of the latter actually turn down help if it means they cannot do as they please.
There is more than enough housing in LA and SF to house the temporarily homeless.
There is also enough housing to house the mentally ill homeless.
But there is essentially no housing to house the drug-addicted homeless.
Thousands of shelter beds go unused in LA every night because most homeless shelters are sober facilities, meaning no drugs or alcohol, and the drug addicts would rather keep their booze and their high then have a bed and a bath. And those are the majority of the homeless you encounter in LA and SF.
(Note: mind altering substances can trigger mental illness; marijuana is known to trigger latent schizoid-series mental illnesses and this is one of the reasons it remained a controlled drug at the federal level for so long. Most illegal psychotropic drugs damage the brain, ultimately leading to the development of mental illness after sustained or heavy use; I don't classify such individuals as mentally ill because their drug addiction dominates.)
Source: I was a public defender representing the criminally mentally ill at the start of my career and essentially acting in the same role as proposed by the mental health court plan (albeit without the criminal law element).
Or, rather, their addiction - which is an illness - prevents them from making that decision. Right?
In that sense, it's no different than giving up sweets, or pushing through physical discomfort during hard exercise.
While drugs can cause mental illness due to brain damage, the amount of drug use required to get to that point is always a deliberate choice by the addict.
And the "tough life" "self medicating" BS is just that. Billions of people have harder lives and don't do drugs to self medicate.
I'm very sympathetic to the whole: "If you can't fix you I can't fix you" resignation of the situation. And I totally get people being over "solving the disease not the problem" rhetoric.
That's all normal.
But you're just flat out pulling justification out of your butt to feel better. Your compassion is limited and it's acceptable that it is. That's all.
Compassion for drug addicts does not mean letting them stay addicted. That is the cruelest thing you can do to them. Compassion for a homeless drug addict means forcing them into treatment so they can be human again.
Yes - in two ways. First, "antisocial behavior" is a very loose phrase. Do you mean "crimes," or do you mean something broader? If the latter, then you're applying a higher standard to the most vulnerable than to everyone else in society, and that's definitely draconain. Second, expecting people to quit addictive drugs cold turkey in order to obtain housing is absolutely doomed to fail. Why not have harm reduction clinics and secular drug rehabs as an option? That would almost certainly lead to better outcomes.
I'm given to understand that harm reduction clinics and secular drug rehabs already exist in San Francisco? That might be wrong. But either way, since the taxpayers of SF are already funding a variety of homelessness-related programs run by the city to the tune of $60k per year per homeless person, those programs absolutely need to come with strings attached, if nothing else to be able to prove to the taxpayers that the programs are successful.
But the policy in the city (and I'm not saying that you are in support of this) has evolved to the point that the very desired outcome of harm-reduction or drug rehab -- that is, reducing drug abuse and dependency -- is infringing on the right of the homeless to behave as they wish, often with the justification that nobody complains about wealthy people doing drugs. At that point, taxpayers are just paying homeless people to do drugs with the side benefit of paying city workers who administer the programs.
Doesn't really matter because CA is uniparty system. Few people doing 180 isn't going stop us from providing compassionate care instead of vindictive suggestions like imprisonment.
I consider myself a progressive individual, but I won’t allow someone to damage my home or other property simply because they are mentally unwell. I won’t allow my child or wife to be harassed or watch them tip toe around feces and broken class because people can’t get their act together.
Pretty sure compassion for top 1% of society isn't really top priority for the society.
you can move easily if you want with all the resources you have at your disposal.
I hope you understand that it's attitudes like yours that are driving otherwise moderate people to join the GOP and become conservative voters.
And you're placing the onus on the contributing members of society who just wish to be left alone. Rather than having the criminals correct or stop their behavior.
Yes if you have options then why not. People make these decisions everyday. You are saying X is your top priority then I don't understand what stoping you from achieving that X when you have all the resources in the world to make it possible. Why do you need compassion from others if you already have the resources to achieve your own goals. What i am missing here.
Communities are more than a package of policies. Californians are unsatisfied with the status quo. They could decamp. Or they could work to change the system. They're doing the latter.
I never seen progressives being blamed on GOP with equivalent "they made them do it".
Voters who are on the fence are only one incident like this away from becoming GOP voters.
And when you have people like the person I replied to saying “oh well, just move if you don’t want people shitting in your yard”, that’s going to drive those people to the GOP.
The people actually on the fence would be equally likely to flip to democrats after hearing equivalent slightly non accommodating phrase. But they are nowhere near of that. GOP does not have to top toe around them, they can go fully openly insulting and it is fine.
It is not being on the fence. It is being pro GOP, seeing its excesses and feeling slightly ashamed for them, so wanting to blame democrats for them.
We see the results: https://seliger.com/2022/06/29/homelessness-is-a-housing-pro...
Newsom is one of my least favorite politicians, but credit where credit is due this is one of the best things that has been accomplished under his administration.
To deal with that, you need medical facilities. Mere housing is insufficient.
rather then, expensive housing made it impossible to keep house for more and more people with issues.
No amount of housing will help those doing drugs and defecating on the streets. They need mandatory treatment if they are public nuisance (which they absolutely are).
For people "out of luck" but willing to get on their feet there should be socialized housing, not necessarily in SF (since that area is super expensive).
What you phrase here are the consequences of the form of society you are living in. The question now is, do you want to solve the root causes of these issues or do you want to paint over them following the motto "out of sight, out of mind".
I mean maybe it is my European arrogance, but to me it is pretty damn obvious that a lot of the things that make parts of the US this dystopic place are a direct result of the lack of social cohesion. Helping total strangers out with my tax money is not something I just do because it is the right thing to do, I also do it because living in a nicer society feels better than living in one where one quarter is desperately fighting for survival while another quarter has basically already given up.
It could be. Social cohesion is a lot easier in monoethnic countries, for better or for worse; and in countries where the monoethnicity is changing like Sweden (where a full quarter of the population is not ethnically Swedish), voters are putting political parties in power that promise to restore it by some combination of reducing immigration or enforcing integration.
In the meantime, the dystopia of the United States is such that the state of Mississippi, often panned both within the US and without as a "literal third-world country", has a higher per capita disposable income than Germany. The image that you have of half the population either struggling to stay alive or basically dead is not true to reality.
The data is fairly consistent that the USA as a whole has slowly lost it's advantages over Europe that it had after WWII and the New Deal:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_of_living_in_the_Unit...
> In the United Nations Human Development Index, which measures health, education, and per capita income levels, the United States is relatively high, currently ranking 8th. However, the Human Development Index is not considered a measure of living standards, but a measure of potential living standards were there no inequality: rather, the inequality-adjusted Human Development Index is considered the actual level of human development, taking inequality into account. On the inequality-adjusted HDI, the United States ranked 27th in 2014, tied with Poland
Wikipedia has newer stats too, but the USA is still basically tied with Poland in the mid 20s:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_inequalit...
So, if the USA as a whole is Poland then presumably Mississipi, despite all the money they get from other states, is likely not doing that great compared with Germany.
Also intersesting, and new to me, they do one that takes into account how wasteful the country is with resources to achieve that standard of living, on that the USA slips way down, below Ukraine:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_planetary...
It is September now, let's talk about USA standards of living vs European in say 6 months. This will give some time to account for the winter with natural gas shortages.
The US can have all of the following: less social cohesion, more money, more inequality, and less human development.
I agree that social cohesion is at the crux of most of it. Many Americans hate most other Americans at any given time. Most are concerned in exerting political control over each other to force them to behave how they want.
So you have a situation where one side wants to "help people" by throwing money at them and yelling at the other side for being heartless greedy bastards, and the other side wants to "help people" by imposing state-sanctioned morality on them and yelling at the other side for being immoral hedonists, and the federal government being simultaneous trying to be used by everyone for their own purposes and yelled at by everyone for being "obstructionist" (hint: that's it working as intended).
Social diversity = differences in morality
differences in morality + State enforced morality = low social cohesion/animosity.
I'm not disputing that other countries are more egalitarian than the US, and it's more comfortable to be poor in countries like Norway or New Zealand (ranked higher on the IHDI) than the US. But I'm willing to bet that almost all, if not all, of the countries higher than the US on IHDI are net immigrants to the US. This data is surprisingly hard to find, but the couple that I did manage find (Ireland, France) supported my viewpoint. If anyone has a table of net migration by country pair, it would be marvellous.
So clearly something is still drawing people to the US, even from countries that are more egalitarian than the US.
This "planetary pressure-adjusted HDI" thing sounds completely made up ;-) but by your same logic, if the US is doing poorly by virtue of it being ranked around Ukraine, then apparently Luxembourg is truly awful, ranked 153rd around the likes of Afghanistan and DR Congo. And I'm sure only very few people would choose to live in Ukraine, Azerbaijan, or Saudi Arabia over the US, given the same relative impact on the planet; in fact, when it comes to people's own lives, practically everyone chooses (metaphorically) "drill, baby, drill!".
The northern EU immigrants to the USA are generally a small amount of highly educated workers. And it's unlikely they're moving to Missisippi:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...
Granted, those are small absolute numbers and may not indicate much, but still, if Germany is that much better than the US, why are consistently more Germans choosing to live in the US than the other way around?
[0]: https://www.destatis.de/EN/Press/2020/10/PE20_N068_12411.htm...
It doesn't really change the fact that America is squandering its many advantages and seems unaware of how poorly it's doing compared with what it could be doing.
You could make a reasonable case today for wanting to be born in China rather than the US. That should embarrass the US but instead they've recently latched on to a very convenient belief that China will implode in the next five years. And they've been saying that for decades because it's been obvious for that long how embarrassing it is to be caught up so fast and need an excuse that isn't just them at fault for their own problems.
"Oh China only did so well because we gave them all this stuff and they cheated and copied us, not at all like how we ripped of IP from Europe in our own history".
No instead were celebrating well known, tragic failure Mississippi because it has a number higher than another number if you carefully avoid all context.
- Infant mortality — Germany: 2.67 deaths per 1000 live births, Mississippi: 8.8 infant deaths per 1000 live births
- Life expectancy — Germany: 80.1 years, Mississippi: 71.9 years
- Homicides per 100.000 population — Germany: 0.933, Mississippi: 20.5
So the superiour disposable income in Mississippi surely does not help to keep their infants (or rather themselves) from dying more often.
But okay: you pay less taxes and therefore have more disposable income as people living in Germany. But it comes at a cost. And while well educated upper class people might not be as much affected by this (if they are lucky and don't fall victim to the resulting violence), this will shape the whole environment you are living in. Nothing else was my point. If I had to choose between more money and a less livable environment, or less money and a more livable environment I'd choose the later one. Money can buy you a lot of nice things, but unless you never leave your home living in a nice environment is worth more for a live well spent. And if you never leave your home, you should maybe wonder why.
By the way I live in Hamburg, Germany, where 34% of the population has a migration background, many turkish, arabian and african minorities. I never heard a single gunshot in a decade of living here. I have never seen a single person publicly using hard drugs (excluding Marihuana, Alcohol and similar things). I have once seen a used syringe and I live in one of the dirtier parts of the city.
Just like living in a noisy flat will wear you down in ways you don't even notice until you finally spend a few calm nights in another place, the environment you live in affects you as well.
> If I had to choose between more money and a less livable environment, or less money and a more livable environment I'd choose the later one.
Some people might choose differently, and moreover, the less taxation there is, the more people are able to choose between the two at all. After all, you can freely give to charity what isn't taxed from you, should you choose to trade your money to better outcomes of those around you.
I have never been to your fair city (though I always have wanted to!), but a 34% foreign-born rate is comparable to many large cities in the US, some in states with more egalitarian policies (California, New Jersey) and some in states with less egalitarian policies (Florida, Texas); so clearly that is not a big driver, at least in the US, of where immigrants choose to go.
San Francisco, famously egalitarian in its local politics, is right in line with Hamburg at 34.1% foreign-born; yet it is full of people using hard drugs in public, leaving syringes and human waste behind.
This is basically my thought process, and I also feel it would be a stronger argument in a lot of cases. Some amount of me, in some cases, views the taxes through the lens of helping people and making a collective better future. Another part of me is much more selfish about it. Don't like seeing homeless, drug addicts, dirty streets, street tents, beggers, etc? Pay your share to not see them.
I don't mean to paint with too broad a brush here. Most people working to aid the homeless are sincere and trying to make a positive influence. But there is a huge amount of waste, and taxpayers are right to be skeptical about where their money is going.
I do support expanding access to basic healthcare (including mental health services) but I think that would have only a minor impact on the problem. There's something else going wrong.
Later, the psychotic break came, and he decided there was a complicated conspiracy involving doctors, and started fantisizing about shooting up the local synagogue (he did not and has never owned a gun). Despite this, the local mental hospital said they could not honor his wishes unless he voluntarily committed himself.
Ultimately, before he got care, he lost his job, wife, apartment, most of his stuff, life savings, medical coverage, and car.
If anything, this bill doesn't go far enough. For one thing, it only fines municipalities that ignore it $365K per year.
As long as conservatorship is a feature at all, might as well push it to its logical extremes
I would also say that just giving people houses will also not completely fix homelessness unless you ban people living on the street and enforce the law. Some people with mental illnesses will live on the street even if they have housing unless you stop them from doing it.
Imagine “jails” that anyone can check into at any time, without being arrested or even accused.
But deeper runs a fundamental issue - if the only tools you have are fines and jail time, how do you punish someone for minor crimes if they have no money or possessions? And let’s not dance around it, forcing someone to do something they do not want to do is a form of punishment, even if they profusely thank you afterwards.
>Imagine “jails” that anyone can check into at any time, without being arrested or even accused.
OK? Not sure what that has to do with anything? If somebody wants shelter they can get it. Just because it isn't some great apartment doesn't mean that it is not housing.
>But deeper runs a fundamental issue - if the only tools you have are fines and jail time, how do you punish someone for minor crimes if they have no money or possessions?
I'm not advocating for only jail or fines. Maybe you are replying go the wrong person?
>And let’s not dance around it, forcing someone to do something they do not want to do is a form of punishment, even if they profusely thank you afterwards.
Not always. If a parent forces their child to go to school is that a punishment?
By criminalizing homelessness and blaming homelessness on mental illness, we're quite literally criminalizing being ill. We're falling for the Evangelical argument that bad things happen mostly to evil people. We're also spending more money making people full wards of the state who with a little bit of help here and there often can work and pay some taxes instead of sleeping in a heavily secured jail.
People are like anything else that needs maintenance. You can invest up front and then invest a bit along the way, or you can let everything go wrong and spend a lot more to address the deficiencies you've clearly allowed. Some of that damage, just as with an ICE engine out of oil, may be permanent or even unrecoverable in cases where that didn't need to be the case.
I'm not saying anything different than you. I am just critical of people think the only thing that needs to be done is just giving housing and maybe paying some of their bills then declaring victory over homelessness. That may be all the help a small minority of the homelessness, but doesn't really solve the issue of why the majority were homeless. We need rehab for those with addictions and we need mental care for those with mental issues. While these homeless are getting treated and for sometime after they likely need housing and food and whatever else you mentioned.
>By criminalizing homelessness and blaming homelessness on mental illness, we're quite literally criminalizing being ill.
The majority of homeless people have a severe mental issue, substance abuse problem or both. They are literally unable to solve their problems and just giving them housing won't suddenly fix addiction. Most don't take advantage of the existing services and so we are left with two choices. Let them live their lives as homeless stuck with whatever problems they have or force treatment on them. I am in the second camp. We need a comprehensive solution to fix this and we have the opportunity to help them. Letting them live on the street and never be free from their issues is awful.
>We're falling for the Evangelical argument that bad things happen mostly to evil people.
I don't think I have seen anybody suggest that people with illnesses are evil, or that bad things happen to evil people or homelessness is evil or anything of the sort.
I think it is wrong to not provide help to those who need it. Many homeless people need help but are unable to ask themselves due to issues many of them experience. I think it is on us, as a society, to help them regardless.
>We're also spending more money making people full wards of the state who with a little bit of help here and there often can work and pay some taxes instead of sleeping in a heavily secured jail.
You are grossly underestimating the help many homeless need. I think this is crux of the disagreement. Some may just need a little help, great we can provide that. Others need more than that and yet you don't seem to want to provide that help. Do you think there would be no homeless if we just provided "a little bit of help here and there"?
>People are like anything else that needs maintenance...
Sure we should provide preventative services, but that doesn't solve the problem for people who need a lot of work. Some people are well past needing a little maintenance need a full refit. Some people are "lemons" and even some maintenance won't prevent their problems.
>you don't seem to want to provide that help
I'm not sure how you went from "not saying anything different" to directly disagreeing with my opening sentence.
I also get the impression you're only talking about completely unsheltered people living on the streets. Homelessness is much bigger than that. There are people who are permanent couch surfers, others who move from one flop motel or boarding house to another as they get a little cash, and people who squat or live in illegal rentals. Lots of those people just need a hand up and would prefer not to get help if it means mandatory drug testing, forced relocation into a carceral living arrangement, losing children into foster care, and treatment they may not need.
Needs are not one size fits all, so help cannot be or it ceases to be real help.
> The new law would let a court order a treatment plan for up to one year, which could be extended for a second year.
> Those who refuse could be placed under a conservatorship and ordered to comply.
> Newsom signed the law over the strong objections of the American Civil Liberties Union of California, Human Rights Watch, Disability Rights California and numerous other organizations that work with homeless people, minority communities and people with disabilities who say the new program will violate civil rights.
One thing is worse than the other.
There is an interesting question I have heard: who is more free, a person who lives in a society with minimal laws but has substance abuse issues and is not really in control of themselves or a person who lives in a society with more restrictive laws but is in control and not dealing with addiction. I generally agree with the second one, but opponents of laws like this one are in the first camp. I think the skewed understanding of freedom is the root of the dissent on this law.
It is not compassionate to allow people who have impaired facilities due to mental illness and/or substance abuse live life as a homeless person. Many people with those issues are unable to solve their problems on their own. Letting them continue on this destructive path will not allow them to have freedom. Freedom is not just being able to do X, but being able to choose to do X. We can help treat people with these type problems and let them have true freedom. Both the individual and society will be better even if we remove their "freedom" to be homeless.
Hopefully, this helps people like the lady I watched lift her skirt and defecate on the road median at a stop light.
I’m not one to disparage California, but this behavior would not be allowed where I live.
I’ve experienced exactly one instance of a mentally ill individual harassing my son while he played in our yard.
The police were here less than 90 seconds after I called them. I’m not a fan of the police in general, but they performed their duty that day and possibly saved that individual’s life.
Let's not neglect you and your son's right not to be harassed in your own yard! A person's life is important, yes, but if their deranged behavior is causing small amounts of harm to a great number of people, at some point it adds up enough to justify forcing them to change their behavior. Let's call it "social pollution", if you will.
Especially when you are behaving in an intimidating manner and standing between me and my 3.5 year old son.
I would feel like an absolute coward if I were to shoot someone that wasn't harming or threatening harm to my people or myself. I live in a college town and have had run ins with random drunk kids on my property, but I was always capable of handling those issues with my words and my hands. However, I'm not taking that chance with a mentally ill individual with my child standing right there.