{"source_url": "http://www.capoliticalreview.com", "url": "http://www.capoliticalreview.com/capoliticalnewsandviews/state-policy-court-orders-keep-mentally-ill-homeless-on-the-streets-of-california/", "title": "State Policy/Court Orders Keep Mentally Ill Homeless on the Streets of California", "top_image": "http://www.capoliticalreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/homeless.jpg", "meta_img": "http://www.capoliticalreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/homeless.jpg", "images": ["http://1.gravatar.com/avatar/173343d302092693057a3377670f2397?s=40&d=mm&r=g", "http://3b9m3d3keq0q4enwal2laffp.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/CA_War_Against_Trump_300x250_Static.jpg", "http://3b9m3d3keq0q4enwal2laffp.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/dmh_banner_234x60.jpg", "http://3b9m3d3keq0q4enwal2laffp.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/landslide_banner_234x60.gif", "http://1.gravatar.com/avatar/a3d2e134d750218ad3fb55c998c0a9e0?s=70&d=mm&r=g", "http://3b9m3d3keq0q4enwal2laffp.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/homeless.jpg", "http://3b9m3d3keq0q4enwal2laffp.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/plugins/jetpack/modules/sharedaddy/images/loading.gif", "http://3b9m3d3keq0q4enwal2laffp.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Lacey_Logo_for_USJF.gif", "http://www.capoliticalreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/homeless.jpg"], "movies": [], "text": "By\n\nCalifornia has 50% of the nations homeless. By many estimates 90% of the California homeless are drug addicts, alcoholics and/or mental ill. It is the policy of the State\u2014and court orders\u2014that keep these sick people on the street without help or chance of recovery. A few are saved\u2014not by government but by private organizations. \u201cAs San Francisco has assumed new authority to place people under conservatorships, The San Francisco Chronicle found a backlog. In a locked ward at San Francisco General Hospital, individuals who were conserved were waiting four months for placement in Napa State Hospital, and even longer for a residential facility. A woman who answered the phone at the public guardian\u2019s office in Solano County, where Rippee lives, said she didn\u2019t have time or permission to talk, repeating several times \u201cwe\u2019re extremely short-staffed.\u201d Gerald Huber, the county\u2019s director of Health and Social Services, noted that even if Rippee were to be conserved, there are very few facilities in the state that accept people with traumatic brain injuries \u2014 and they are always full with wait lists. Literally, government does not provide the money needed for health care , protection or rehabilitation. While San Fran is spending half a billion to stop cars from driving on Market Street, they do not have the money to get the mentally ill off the streets and into recovery. Government priorities are the problem. No wonder President Trump is looking at taking over the homeless problem\u2014the problem is NOT the homeless it is the government.\n\n\u201cWe\u2019ve lost our compass.\u201d For California\u2019s most visible mentally ill, is a return to forced treatment a solution \u2014 or a false promise?\n\nBy Jocelyn Wiener, CalMatters, 12/30/19\n\nTO SEE FULL ARTICLE CLICK ON HEADLINE\n\nThe sightings of James Mark Rippee are all over his sisters\u2019 Facebook.\n\nSomeone spotted him sleeping by a furniture store in Vallejo. Someone walked him to a gas station for coffee. Someone prayed for him at Nations Giant Hamburgers.\n\nRippee, 56, developed schizophrenia after a horrific motorcycle accident more than three decades ago caused a traumatic brain injury and the loss of his eyesight. His delusions range from being an alien, to getting chased by the KKK, to being prevented from collecting his lottery winnings, his sisters say.\n\nIn September, he stepped into traffic and was hit by a car, his sisters say, then developed a brain abscess. After weeks in the hospital and a board-and-care, he walked out and his 62-year-old twin sisters \u2013 Catherine Hanson and Linda Privatte \u2013 weren\u2019t alerted.\n\nNow they couldn\u2019t find him.\n\nComplicating things further: Hanson is bedridden with blood cancer; Privatte is legally blind and cannot drive. They\u2019ve come to depend on a Facebook community, \u201cMark of Vacaville,\u201d to be their \u201ceyes and ears\u201d on their brother\u2019s situation.\n\nThe existence of the 2,000-plus member group is at once a moving testament to a community\u2019s compassion and an indictment of a system that often leaves the most vulnerable to fend for themselves.\n\nWhy do people as sick as James Mark Rippee sleep on our streets? Some blame laws that prioritize civil rights over forced treatment; others point to an under-resourced and uneven mental health system that has failed to provide people like Rippee with long-promised care.\n\nEveryone struggles with the same underlying question: What should be done?\n\n\u201cWhen we allow people to deteriorate on the streets, or interface with law enforcement that leads to incarceration, what are we doing?\u201d asks Dr. Jonathan Sherin, director of the Los Angeles Department of Mental Health. \u201cWe\u2019ve lost our compass.\u201d\n\nState lawmakers are watching a controversial new pilot program to expand forced treatment in San Francisco.\n\nIn the meantime, families watch in desperation as loved ones cycle between homelessness, emergency rooms and jail cells. Short courses of medication may lead to the quieting of voices, which, in turn, leads to a release to the streets. Often, as in James Mark Rippee\u2019s case, the family is simultaneously shut out of the conversation and blamed for abandonment.\n\nSome of these families are aware of the downsides of involuntary treatment, the miserable side effects of psychiatric medications, the critical shortage of inpatient facilities. They recognize that conservatorship \u2013 in which a court-appointed conservator manages another person\u2019s living situation, medical decisions and mental health treatment \u2014 is no panacea, and should be a last resort.\n\nJames Mark Rippee himself puts it this way: \u201cI don\u2019t need to be in a locked-up facility. It was like I was a hostage.\u201d\n\nIn recent years, Rippee\u2019s twin sisters \u2014 Hanson, the red-headed warrior, Privatte, the blonde diplomat \u2014 have redoubled their decades-long effort to get him help. They worry their own health problems might someday leave no one to fight for him.\n\n\u201cHe is the worst-case scenario of anybody being so vulnerable on the streets,\u201d Hanson said. \u201cEvery winter we wonder: Is this going to be the year that he dies?\u201d\n\nIn 1967, a law passed that transformed the treatment of people with mental illness in California.\n\nUntil then, it had been fairly easy for a family member to call police to force someone into mental health treatment. Conditions in the state hospitals were frequently abhorrent: Patients wore gunny sacks, sometimes bathed just once a week, and were subjected to lobotomies and electric shock treatments. Too often, people were locked away for life.\n\nRepublican Assemblyman Frank Lanterman and Democratic Sens. Nicholas Petris and Alan Short proposed a radical overhaul, which Gov. Ronald Reagan signed into law.\n\nWhen the Lanterman-Petris-Short law took effect a few years later, it established strict criteria for involuntary treatment. It imposed specific timeframes for involuntary confinement and limited involuntary holds to those deemed a danger to themselves or others, or gravely disabled. This included the 72-hour hold that police term a 5150.\n\nBut within a few decades, Sen. Petris noticed growing numbers of people with serious mental illnesses appearing on the streets and in jails.\n\nIn a 1989 oral history, Petris lamented that while the law had promised funding to treat people with mental illness in the community, Gov. Reagan diverted tens of millions allocated back to the state general fund.\n\n\u201cThat took the guts right out of this state money for local treatment,\u201d Petris said. \u201cIt emptied out the hospitals, but there was no follow-up treatment\u2026.In this overemphasis to get away from this tyrannical and oppressive system\u2026 of incarcerating people so easily, we went overboard the other way.\u201d\n\nEven when funding was available, \u201cNot In My Back Yard\u201d resistance also made it challenging to locate residential and community treatment facilities. In the half-century since, much of the debate about helping people like Rippee has centered on the Lanterman-Petris-Short law. The state auditor is currently examining it; a report is anticipated this spring.\n\nIn recent years, several bills in the Legislature have sought to modify the law, focusing on redefining the term \u201cgravely disabled.\u201d Rippee\u2019s sisters petitioned and testified last year on behalf of a bill that sought to define \u201cgravely disabled\u201d to include not just those who can\u2019t provide for their own food, clothing and shelter, but also those who don\u2019t seek needed medical treatment. It failed, in part because opponents considered it ineffective and dangerously expansive.\n\nMore than 5,000 people in the state were on permanent conservatorships, and close to 2,000 were on temporary conservatorships, as of 2016-17, according to data collected by the Department of Health Care Services. The data is incomplete; Scarlett Hughes, executive director of the California State Association of Public Administrators, Public Guardians and Public Conservators calls it \u201cextremely inaccurate.\u201d\n\nLast year lawmakers agreed to create a narrow 5-year pilot program that makes it easier for three counties (San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego) to conserve homeless individuals with serious mental illnesses or substance abuse disorders. The program allows courts to conserve individuals who have been placed under a 72-hour psychiatric hold at least eight times in a year. A second law, passed this year, expanded the rules to allow 50 to 100 more people in San Francisco to be placed under conservatorship.\n\nCivil rights advocates have raised serious concerns: In 2018, Susan Mizner, the disability rights program director for the ACLU, described conservatorship as \u201cthe biggest deprivation of civil rights aside from the death penalty\u201d and said the law would incentivize police to repeatedly detain homeless individuals.\n\nSo far, only San Francisco has adopted it. That reflects another reality: Different counties have different rules. Even without the pilot program, depending on where you live, public defenders, judges, public guardians and others have different interpretations of the law.\n\n\u201cIt varies from county to county, it varies within counties,\u201d said Randall Hagar, government relations director for the California Psychiatric Association. \u201cWhat is \u2018gravely disabled\u2019 here may not be considered \u2018gravely disabled\u2019 there.\u201d\n\nBecause counties must use local funds to pay high placement costs \u2014 and because not all counties have the same types of services available \u2014 variations are a significant concern.\n\nDisability rights advocates insist that maintaining the standards outlined by Lanterman-Petris-Short is essential to protect people\u2019s civil rights. Most people with serious mental illnesses aren\u2019t refusing help, they say \u2014 appropriate help just isn\u2019t available.\n\nLynn Rivas, associate director of Oakland-based Peers Envisioning & Engaging in Recovery Services, understands that families feel desperate. She knew a woman with paranoid schizophrenia who lived on the streets of Richmond. Mental health workers tried repeatedly, but couldn\u2019t get her to come inside.\n\nEven though \u201cit breaks my heart,\u201d Rivas said, she\u2019s willing to live with that consequence.\n\n\u201cI think involuntary imprisonment is worse,\u201d she said.\n\nHeather, a program coordinator at the organization, has herself experienced involuntary treatment. In the hospital, she said, everything was taken from her and her entire schedule revolved around medication.\n\n\u201cI think it\u2019s just really cold the way they treat you,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s like you have a disease\u2026they treat you like you\u2019re not a human being.\u201d\n\nOnce she stabilized, she said, the hospital discharged her back to the streets, without addressing her underlying issues. The experience not only didn\u2019t help her, she said, it made her afraid to seek help.\n\nSome worry that public dismay about the current homelessness crisis will encourage lawmakers to strip people of their rights.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s still political failures that are trying to be masked with solutions that may decrease the visibility of individuals on the street,\u201d said Curtis Child, director of legislation at Disability Rights California. He also compares the situation of people with mental illness to that of people with developmental disabilities. For the latter group, deinstitutionalization was accompanied by the creation of regional centers, he said, \u201cin which everyone gets a plan, everyone gets a worker.\u201d\n\n\u201cWith mental illness, we did nothing.\u201d\n\nFor Child, and many other advocates, the solution is not more conservatorship \u2014 it\u2019s creating affordable housing and more robust mental health services.\n\n\u201cThe volume of individuals who are entering homelessness on a given day is overwhelming all of our systems,\u201d said Michelle Cabrera, executive director of the County Behavioral Health Directors Association of California,. \u201cWe\u2019ve got a serious problem on our hands.\u201d\n\nDr. Amy Barnhorst, vice chair of community and hospital services for the UC Davis Department of Psychiatry agrees that the focus should be on building out the mental health system, not changing the law.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s like cutting more doors into an empty building,\u201d she said. \u201cThere\u2019s not the services there. We don\u2019t have the workforce. We don\u2019t have the treatments. We don\u2019t have the infrastructure. \u201d\n\nEven if a change in law permitted more people to be conserved, a shortage of placements and \u201ca gross lack of funding\u201d for county programs means there would be nowhere to send many of them, said Hughes, of the California State Association of Public Administrators, Public Guardians and Public Conservators.. Earlier this year, a state budget proposal to increase the amount of funding for public guardians by 35% \u2014 or $68 million \u2014 failed.\n\nCounty conservators receive no direct state funding, and in the past five years have received a huge influx in clients diverted from the criminal justice system, Hughes said. Some counties went from five referrals a month to 30 or 40, she said.\n\n\u201cThey are drowning,\u201d she said.\n\nSimultaneously, the number of facilities that can take them is shrinking, said Chris Koper, a legislative analyst for the organization. At one point, she said, she and some friends started listing the facilities in that county that had shut down. They stopped when they got to 35, she said: \u201cIt was too depressing.\u201d\n\nThat leaves many conservatees in a \u201cplacement pending\u201d status, stuck in jails or hospitals. In some cases, conservators have resorted to having staff members care for people with mental illness in hotel rooms rather than leave an individual on the streets, she said.\n\nTO SEE REST OF STORY CLICK ON HEADLINE", "keywords": [], "meta_keywords": [""], "tags": [], "authors": [], "publish_date": "Wed Jan  1 20:34:43 2020", "summary": "", "article_html": "", "meta_description": "", "meta_lang": "en", "meta_favicon": "http://3b9m3d3keq0q4enwal2laffp.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/themes/church/images/favicon.ico", "meta_data": {"og": {"locale": "en_US", "type": "article", "title": "State Policy/Court Orders Keep Mentally Ill Homeless on the Streets of California - California Political Review", "description": "California has 50% of the nations homeless.\u00a0 By many estimates 90% of the California homeless are drug addicts, alcoholics and/or mental ill.\u00a0 It is the policy of the State\u2014and court orders\u2014that keep these sick people on the street without help or chance of recovery.\u00a0 A few are saved\u2014not by government but by private organizations. \u201cAs \u2026", "url": "http://www.capoliticalreview.com/capoliticalnewsandviews/state-policy-court-orders-keep-mentally-ill-homeless-on-the-streets-of-california/", "site_name": "California Political Review", "updated_time": "2020-01-01T15:38:41-08:00", "image": "http://www.capoliticalreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/homeless.jpg"}, "article": {"section": "Stephen Frank's California Political News And Views", "published_time": "2020-01-01T20:34:43-08:00", "modified_time": "2020-01-01T15:38:41-08:00"}, "twitter": {"card": "summary", "description": "California has 50% of the nations homeless.\u00a0 By many estimates 90% of the California homeless are drug addicts, alcoholics and/or mental ill.\u00a0 It is the policy of the State\u2014and court orders\u2014that keep these sick people on the street without help or chance of recovery.\u00a0 A few are saved\u2014not by government but by private organizations. \u201cAs [\u2026]", "title": "State Policy/Court Orders Keep Mentally Ill Homeless on the Streets of California - California Political Review", "domain": "California Political Review", "image": {"src": "http://www.capoliticalreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/homeless.jpg"}}, "google-site-verification": "9Qn3d7sTiJxgCNAnf6-cqrNWSQzGSfHWyMx6oVYPrS8"}, "canonical_link": "http://www.capoliticalreview.com/capoliticalnewsandviews/state-policy-court-orders-keep-mentally-ill-homeless-on-the-streets-of-california/"}