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Lastly, if you have proven “middle ground” ideas perhaps you can share them with the State of California, Oregon, Washington and Austin Texas?
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Why should I? Isn't that the job of people with advanced degrees who study psychiatry, social work, and public health? Are you saying those fields have zero insight into this?
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Originally Posted by Pedestrian
Conservatorships can utilize group homes, halfway houses and all sorts of facilities that can ensure they are living in safe, healthful conditions. The "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" state mental hospitals are history. They no longer exist. No one today will be locked up in anything like that.
In San Francisco, there are 2 hospitals with mental health "beds": A ward at San Francisco General and Laguna Honda Hospital. Both are brand new, modern facilities well respected for their capable and compassionate staffs. But San Francisco generally prefers to put all sorts of people under its care, from juvenile offenders to the mentally ill, in community-based care when possible.
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Yes, that I was hoping was the case. I think this approach makes sense. Again, I'm mostly just critical of the politically biased attitudes I see online where someone says all homeless people are characterized as hopelessly mental ill, when mental illness can mean lots of things which aren't incompatible with having a job or living in society.
All I know is that for a long time I worked in retail and fast food jobs surrounded by people who had terrible lives, which taught me how fortunate I was. I knew more than one person who confided to me that they had mental health issues. They would work hard and be normal one day, but sometimes struggle with something, and an occasional incident would get them let go so they'd have a hard time with stable employment. They'd develop a learned helplessness mindset. It's not hard for me to imagine these sorts of people getting into drugs. Of course, being from a small town, vulnerable people would have housing and family support. But in a ultra expensive city where even if they did have the money they'd have bad history as a tenant, I can see housing being a problem. Combine that with the stresses of being on the streets and it seems like you would have a person resembling those sleeping on sidewalks in San Francisco, right?
Or, what about adults who are very mildly intellectually handicapped, like people with IQ's in the 60s? What do you do with them? They can't really make it on their own if they don't have family, but they should be fine to be in public, no?
If we had a system where people like this were all brought in and the default was essentially to institutionalize them just because that was the easy way to get them off the streets, it would be an incredible injustice where a person like I described above was grouped with people who indeed are so profoundly handicapped they cannot function at all in society. I'm not saying that a person who runs around mumbling and is unable to practice hygiene or threatens others should be allowed to sleep on the streets just so they can be free. Just that the system should be incredibly thorough in determining exactly what a person's needs are and not depriving them of freedom. And knowledgeable people should be investigating the effectiveness of current policies and proposing improvements at all times. Anything less is unacceptable when it is the fundamental civil liberties and rights of people we are talking about.
I also empathize with the homeless people who live in those formal tiny house camps like they have in Oregon. I mean, nobody wants to have their personal belongings taken away. We all want to spend money we had to work to earn on things we want, like a smart phone or beer, right? Should someone who for the rest of the life will be dependent on the system(and therefore not negatively motivated by receiving handouts) have to live in an institutional "poor house" setting with puritanical rules, or should we just kind of let them have their TV and porn and their dog as long as they feed it?