Jenny Har | The Associated Press
SAN FRANCISCO — A controversial proposal by California Gov. Gavin Newsom to include more homeless people in mental health treatment is making its way through the Legislature, struggling to address a problem reaching every corner of the state. Despite the deep misunderstanding of the MPs.
Legislators are concerned that there is not enough guaranteed staffing or housing for the program to be successful, while vulnerable individuals are forced into court-ordered services against their will. Still, the bill passed the Senate unanimously last month, and passed the Assembly Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, one of several stops before being voted on by the full chamber.
But the proposal didn’t even get its first vote, and members frustrated by the status quo stressed how important all the pieces – housing, services, trained staff, heartfelt support – are for the program to work.
“I know we can all agree that the current system is broken and failing. You can walk outside this building and go a few blocks…and see those failures every single day,” said assembly Matt said Haney, a Democrat who lives in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district, where people with open drug use and homelessness continue to suffer serious mental health breakdowns in common places.
“We are in dire need of a paradigm shift,” he said at a judiciary hearing on Tuesday.
Newsom, a Democrat and former San Francisco mayor, has made homelessness a priority for his administration, devoting billions of dollars to converting motels into housing and pitching for clear camps. He proposed spending $2 billion to build more treatment beds this year, and in March, he proposed setting up special mental health courts in every county to link services to homeless individuals with schizophrenia or other mental disorders.
About a quarter of California’s estimated 161,000 non-domesticated residents have a serious mental illness. They pinball in prisons, emergency rooms, temporary psychopaths and between the streets until they are arrested for a minor crime and brought before a judge who can order them into a long-term treatment plan.
Newsom said his proposal allows family members, emergency dispatchers and others to refer the person for help, and preferably before the person commits a crime. He has said that it is not kind to let the distressed people deteriorate on the streets.
In a statement praising the bill’s progress, he said, “Care Court is about meeting people where they are and working with compassion to support the thousands of Californians who live on our streets, but who Our help is needed the most.”
The goal is for the individual to voluntarily accept services, but the law may result in forced treatment, Newsom has said, which advocates for civil liberties. It does not guarantee housing or provide dedicated funding, and comes at a time when psychologists and other behavioral health specialists are in high demand. Critics of the law also say that forced treatment will fail.
“By no means should there be a forced situation where you’re throwing needles at people or forcing them to take drugs, that’s where you get into people who resent it.” And regret and they go down the spiral of self-medication or any other number of issues,” said Eric Harris, director of public policy at Disability Rights California, who opposes the bill.
Assembly member Ash Kalra, a Democrat from San Jose, voted against the proposal on Tuesday, agreeing with critics who say judicial courts are a scary place for homeless people and more money is already hard, intensive and slow. organizations should go. The act of convincing people to seek services.
A legislative analysis provided to the Judiciary Committee raised serious concerns with the proposal.
It strongly recommends that people not be ordered into a court program until housing and services are guaranteed and that counties do not implement the program until infrastructure is in place. According to the analysis, counties should not be sanctioned or fined by the state unless it has the resources and funding for voluntary, community-based programs should not be reduced to support the new program.