Confused? California's ultra-progressive Governor Gavin Newsom has Force clear The government has set up homeless camps in its jurisdictions and is using state funding to encourage cities and towns to do the same.
Homeless advocates are outraged. Housing is a human right He said it was “strange” for a liberal governor to take such a “heartless” and “ultra-conservative” hard-line stance.
But anyone paying attention should have fully expected the governor's move. Newsom has been tough on homelessness for decades and is eager to reverse Ronald Reagan's failed legacy. Let's wish him the best of luck.
It may sound like fiction, but it's true: San Francisco pays “general assistance” cash payments to some of its homeless residents. In the early 2000s, news reports said Full of stories Homeless people are spending taxpayer money on drugs and alcohol.
As a young San Francisco superintendent, Mr. Newsom successfully overhauled the system through a local ballot measure called “Care Not Cash.” The measure passed with 60% of the vote and pledged to cut universal assistance and use the savings to provide shelter beds and wraparound services. Mr. Newsom ran to the state's highest office on a reputation as a no-nonsense, bold thinker.
By 2009, the city's homeless population was 25% decrease, Chronic homelessness fell by 72 percent; At least officially. Yet today, the Bay Area's homeless population is just below levels seen in the 2000s. Early 2000s.
And of course, San Francisco's problems are widespread across the state and the region. Housing costsMass Release from prisonmore powerful Opioidspandemic-related Social isolation and Addiction and Mental Health Issues.
The situation is both clear and intractable. In 2019, the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Martin v. Boise The ruling effectively legalized public camping in nine Western states when there aren't enough shelter beds to house homeless people.
But last month, the reconstituted Supreme Court overturned the case Martin v. Boise, allowing the small Oregon town of Grants Pass to ban public camping, which comes with fines and possible prison time.
Fewer prisons and tougher punishments are good. What we really need are more psychiatric hospitals. But they're almost all closed. Ronald Reagan is to blame for that.
And Gavin Newsom is trying to solve that.
In the 1960s, public opinion turned against involuntary hospitalization and the overuse of “snake pit” psychiatric hospitals. California's social engineers promoted “deinstitutionalization,” shifting psychiatric inpatients to outpatient care and pulling the state's underfunded budget out of the red.
In 1967, fellow Republicans persuaded then-Governor Reagan to sign this monumental bill. Lanterman-Petris-Short ActIt seemed like a win all around: freedom for the locked up and a self-satisfied free lunch for social engineers and taxpayers.
Within five years, California Refugee population declines The number of children in the U.S. fell by about 70 percent, and 25 years later it had fallen by about 85 percent. The deinstitutionalization craze spread to state capitals across the country. MassachusettsBetween 1953 and 1980, the number of psychiatric hospitalizations fell by 90%. In 1950, there was 1 in every 3,500 Americans admitted to a psychiatric hospital; in 1970, that figure dropped to 1 in every 700, and in 1980, to 1 in every 3,000. Today, Only 36,000 people are hospitalized. The rate of people admitted to state psychiatric wards is 1 in 10,000.
As politicians voluntarily closed psychiatric hospitals, the Supreme Court, in a series of unrealistic decisions, gave previously unknown “rights” to the mentally ill. In 1975, The court unanimously“Can the state isolate harmless mentally ill people solely to protect its citizens from those who live differently from their own?” he asked, likening incarceration to locking up “physically unattractive or socially eccentric” people to avoid “public anxiety.”
Meanwhile, stingy politicians delayed funding for the community clinics and outpatient care that would have accompanied deinstitutionalization. The streets and prisons quickly became America's new psychiatric hospitals.
While mental illness isn't the only cause of the rise in homeless camps, as the Journal reports: Psychiatry Times In 2020, the Los Angeles Times noted that “there is a clear association…in roughly two-thirds of cases, mental illness began before homelessness occurred.” 2019 Analysis It found that about 70% of the county's homeless population suffers from mental illness or drug addiction. 2022 University of California, San Francisco Survey It found that 82% of homeless people in California self-identify as having a mental illness, and 66% have recently experienced symptoms.
Golden State (and most Tracked) is more than $24 billion Since 2018, significant funding has been directed toward homeless services, including mental health and substance abuse treatment. But the UCSF study found that only 14% of homeless people with mental illness in California receive outpatient care, and only 20% receive medication.
Gov. Newsom has been troubled by the crisis and has worked to reform the state's complicated and loose guardianship laws and create court-mandated outpatient treatment programs, known as CARE Courts.
But last year, the governor went further, presenting himself as either a radical reformer or a reactionary. Bond measures The bill passed in March would, yes, build a psychiatric hospital. The bill, which passed by a narrow margin, aims to build facilities with beds for 10,000 patients and quadruple the outpatient slots.
Second, he gutted the 1967 Opening Mental Hospitals Act that Reagan had signed. Reforms Newsom supports It gave qualified third parties (mental health professionals) the power to impose guardianship on individuals suffering from substance abuse or mental disorders if their condition puts them at “high risk of serious harm.”
California's new policy shift will undoubtedly face legal challenges based on a silly Supreme Court precedent from the 1970s, but it's still common-sense progress on a deep-rooted homeless problem, and Governor Newsom deserves credit for it.
Whether or not to involuntarily hospitalize and treat the mentally ill and drug addicts raises existential questions about free will, dignity, and personal autonomy, but as a practical and moral question, does contributing to the misery of our cities make us more enlightened, or make our communities more livable for us and them?
Sean Kennedy is executive director of the Coalition for Law, Order and Security, a think tank in Alexandria, Virginia, and a fellow at the Maryland Institute for Public Policy.
