homeless people making the sidewalk their home? (Riverside: insurance, camping)

[majoun]

Originally Posted by seain dublin

Do you know in FL they have something called The Baker Act, it has been used against perfectly "normal" people by vindictive family members. All they have to do is say the person is acting "off" and the cops(who in most cases have no training on mental health) take the person to a lockdown facility for 3 days. Isn't that nice? Kids have used it on parents, people who are divorcing have used to it to get the other spouse out of the house so they have 3 days to take valuables and clean out accounts.

Would you like that here?.

Does Florida have the homeless problems we have?

If the answer is no, then obviously they're doing something right.

The Baker Act would also incentivize the homeless to behave. As would Stand Your Ground.

[cmarlin20]

Originally Posted by 2sleepy

So you are saying it's legal to lock someone up without due process as long as you don't treat them against their will

Your reply appears to be a strawman, I said no such thing.

I said there is no constitutional prohibition of involuntary treatment as they do have due process.

I'm only discussing gravely disabled people not every homeless person, what is your solution for gravely disabled people who are now on the street?

[cmarlin20]

Originally Posted by seain dublin

However who determines who is mentally ill? What are the guidelines? Is someone taking Prozac for mild depression mentally ill? Someone who has emotional breakdown due to personal stress, such as someone who lost a child? Where do you draw the line?

I know someone who was put on anxiety medicine and got emotional over something major, a family member said "are you off your meds".....I guess if they don't walk around like a zombie 24/7 and show any emotion over a major situation that anyone would get emotional over, they're now labeled "nuts".

See how that goes?

You don't seem to get that. We're already going down a slippery slope in this country on many issues.

California law has guidelines for diagnosis by mental health professionals, no one taking anti depressants alone is going to be involuntarily committed, also, no healthcare professional would label anyone "nuts".

In your concern for avoiding slippery slopes, you are abandoning people to be left in vulnerable situations on the streets who are unable to care for themselves.

Do you believe there are gravely disabled people who are unable to care for personal basic needs (food, shelter, clothing)? What care/treatment do you propose for them?

[Texamichiforniasota]

Originally Posted by 2sleepy

That's too much, it will never pass. It's stupid of them to even try. They should have looked at cheaper options.

This is the crux of the issue. It's a huge amount of money because they are trying to build it in Central parts of LA County, some of the most heavily developed and expensive real estate in the US. The problem is, if they were to put it out in a more affordable area where they could build 4 times as many units for the same price, like the Antelope Valley, most of the homeless would refuse to go there. As others have said, with current law, you couldn't force them to go. The other issue with the current bond is that by the time 10,000 units are built, the homeless population will go up by 15,000. While doing nothing will make the problem worse, when people evaluate the program they'll say we're out billions of dollars and we have more homeless people than ever.

[Texamichiforniasota]

Originally Posted by SandyCo

Before you all get on your high horses about institutionalizing the mentally ill, my mother was paranoid schizophrenic in addition to being an alcoholic. She belonged in a locked nursing facility, because she didn't have the capacity to care for herself. She and her POS boyfriend would sit around and get drunk together. The last time I visited her unannounced (because I hadn't been able to get hold of her by phone), the place was a pig stye, there were dirty dishes all over the kitchen, the floor was filthy, and my mother was wearing a ratty old bathrobe over a pair of underwear, smoking like a chimney, with her lips all puffy from the alcohol. I had legal conservatorship over her for a year, and at the end of that year, I refused to renew it. I was afraid that I would be held liable, but there was nothing I could do. There were NO beds available in the locked nursing facilities where she should have been placed. This was back in the mid-80s. Nothing has improved; it has only gotten worse. (And for anyone who would argue that I should have been taking care of her, I was working full time, married, and had a two-year-old daughter. My mother lived twenty miles away, and my daughter needed me more. It was just that simple.)

Like it or not, severely mentally ill people need to be locked up. They're too sick to understand that they're sick. The alternative to institutionalizing them is this lovely revolving door we have now of homelessness, crime, jail, release. It's not working, period.

To anyone saying that I want to "trample on basic rights": Until you've dealt with mental illness up close, you have no idea what it's like, and how difficult it is to convince someone to get treatment or to stay on medication. It's a losing battle most of the time, and I don't blame anyone who gives up on an unstable, resistant family member.

You are not alone. There are a lot of family members of the mentally ill that go through the same struggles. No one wants their sibling, parent, or uncle cycling between homelessness, jail, and unfortunately all to often, the victims of crime, or injured by law enforcement while perpetrating crimes. Most people don't have the capability to care for these individuals on there own, it takes a professional health care team. Except for the very wealthy, only the state can provide that level of care. People like toolmutt only look at one side of civil rights. There is another side that many Americans believe people have a fundamental human right to shelter, food, and appropriate medical care. People who don't have the capacity to provide those things or make decisions for themselves need the state to do it for them. Every time you see a story about a mentally ill homeless person getting killed attacking a police officer, the family always says they tried to get help but their relative was too sick to continue their care on their own. These families aren't lying. The only way most of these people will get the help and care they need is to institutionalize them. I agree with Cmarlin20's post below that their needs to be due process and determinations need to be made by mental health professionals. The old system may have institutionalized people that with today's treatments would not need to be. However, today's system leaves far to many vulnerable individuals without appropriate care. toolmutt will point out that current legal precedent is against institutionalization. That is true, but precedent can be overturned, and it wouldn't require a constitutional amendment, just like it didn't require a constitutional amendment to overturn school segregation by reversing precedent. All it requires is open minded justices re-evaluating the consequences of the existing decisions and interpreting whether those consequences are what the constitution and previous decisions intended.

Originally Posted by cmarlin20

California law has guidelines for diagnosis by mental health professionals, no one taking anti depressants alone is going to be involuntarily committed, also, no healthcare professional would label anyone "nuts".

In your concern for avoiding slippery slopes, you are abandoning people to be left in vulnerable situations on the streets who are unable to care for themselves.

Do you believe there are gravely disabled people who are unable to care for personal basic needs (food, shelter, clothing)? What care/treatment do you propose for them?

[Tulemutt]

Originally Posted by Texamichiforniasota

... People like toolmutt only look at one side of civil rights.

Explain. I'm curious. Curious about how many sides there are to civil rights - and which of those sides I limit myself to.

Originally Posted by Texamichiforniasota

...toolmutt will point out that current legal precedent is against institutionalization.

Oh. Maybe I'm starting to understand now. You see me as making observations about realities - which contradict ideological agendas? That's pretty much true.

[Texamichiforniasota]

Originally Posted by Tulemutt

Oh. Maybe I'm ... ideological That's pretty much true.

You said it, not me.

[Kings Gambit]

Originally Posted by SandyCo

I think we all have the same problem here. Even though the economy is supposedly getting better, there's a certain segment of society who has been left out, and those are the very poor, mentally ill, or drug addicted people. During the last economic crisis, a lot of mental health clinics closed. These homeless people are without medication, without recourse, so they get shuffled here and there without any of their problems being solved or even addressed. Southern California is a mecca for homeless people because of the weather, and the cost of living is so high that it's easy to fall through the cracks when evictions occur. I'm also one of the NIMBYs (Not In My Back Yard), but I don't see this getting any better until some major policy changes are made, like:

1. Bring back long term institutionalization. Very mentally ill people need it; they won't stay on their medication if left to their own devices.

2. Find ways to ID people and establish "residency", simply because if you offer services without doing that, suddenly you're dealing with many more people than you were originally, because the word gets out.

3. I don't know if this is still happening, but other states used to put their mentally ill or recently released from the hospital on buses to L.A. We need to find out if this still occurs, and stop it if it does!

All of these are expensive, but the alternative is to see the friction between working people and the homeless increase, because no one wants to pay high rent or an expensive mortgage just to have to walk around homeless (sometimes crazy) people and their shopping carts full of... whatever that is. Sometimes it's unidentifiable.

Good post SandoCo. I live in Encino and have been seeing a LOT of homeless lately. It must be a 300% increase withing the last few years. Many of them seem to now "live" off Burbank Blvd. between Balboa and Woodley, or in the River where it passes through Lake Balboa, but they move out into Encino looking for food or recycle containers. No joke, just the other day on my Menchies run, I counted ELEVEN homeless people on Ventura Blvd within the three blocks from Balboa to Menchies. ELEVEN!!! Men and women.

My eight year old feels so bad for them. We put out some boxes and bags of clothes and shoes the other day and within an hour they were all gone.

Something has to be done to help them. And I am not talking about just moving them somewhere else because that doesnt solve the problem. That is just "sweeping it under the run and just getting away from me" type thing that doesnt work. Its just a "Let someone else deal with it and get them away from me".

[Tulemutt]

Originally Posted by Texamichiforniasota

You said it, not me.

Always amusing when someone edits another's comments to be snarky - um, when the original statement is immediately readable above the misappropriation. Meanwhile, why don't you show us examples of where I ever post ideologically rather than realistically backed by science, social science, statistics, hard data, mathematics. Ideologies are poor excuses for lazy intellects. Easy to "believe" in things that one finds emotionally appealing - as opposed to learning, understanding, accommodating, accepting the realities of life, eh?

[Tulemutt]

Originally Posted by Kings Gambit

Good post SandoCo. I live in Encino and have been seeing a LOT of homeless lately. It must be a 300% increase withing the last few years. Many of them seem to now "live" off Burbank Blvd. between Balboa and Woodley, or in the River where it passes through Lake Balboa, but they move out into Encino looking for food or recycle containers. No joke, just the other day on my Menchies run, I counted ELEVEN homeless people on Ventura Blvd within the three blocks from Balboa to Menchies. ELEVEN!!! Men and women.

My eight year old feels so bad for them. We put out some boxes and bags of clothes and shoes the other day and within an hour they were all gone.

Something has to be done to help them. And I am not talking about just moving them somewhere else because that doesnt solve the problem. That is just "sweeping it under the run and just getting away from me" type thing that doesnt work. Its just a "Let someone else deal with it and get them away from me".

Good post in expressing concern? Perhaps. Bad post in that it advances mythologies about the homeless.