NO RELIEF IN SIGHT –
August 11, 2021- According to the Associated Press, “in California, a quarter of the 161,000 people experiencing homelessness also have a severe mental illness.” They “pinball” between nonprofits and government agencies, “cycling through” emergency rooms, incarceration and homelessness.
I have written before about people living well off the “homeless industrial complex”, from the lavishly paid administrators at the management-heavy Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority to the developers who build taxpayer-funded housing for the homeless that costs more than $500,000 per unit. Taxpayers spend tens of billions of dollars on homelessness, and that’s without even counting the costs racked up by police, fire and sanitation departments. But the problem is only getting worse. Potential solutions face entrenched opposition from those who like the current system. For example, something that might have helped Serge Chaumette has been denounced as “dangerous” by an association with offices on K Street in Sacramento. The group is called, “Mental Health America of California.”
On February 3, 2020, MHAC sent a letter to the acting director of the California Department of Health Care Services to strongly oppose a proposal to get permission from the federal government to spend Medicaid funds on mental health care in facilities with more than 16 beds.
