Part 3: The Mental Health Crisis on the Streets of San Francisco: My Position on the Issue

This is Part 3 of 4. For Part 1, click here

With clear divisions on the issue of SB 1045, Mayor Breed must focus on providing additional facilities and health care systems for people with mental illness living on the streets.  Performance Audit of the Department of Public Health Behavioral Health Services in April 2019 proves that the city lacks resources in the mental health care system. SB 1045 on the other hand will require the city to divert resources to increase policing of homeless individuals.  San Francisco’s mental health care system is gravely impacted already. Unless the city organizes and restructures the current system, the city needs to reconsider implementing SB 1045.

SB 1045 will reinforce the vicious cycle of police authority to detain homeless people

SB 1045 will only reinforce vicious cycles of streets, psychiatric emergency rooms, and jails. In Street Sheet ‘s “Expanded Conservatorships: The New Trauma Detentions,”     Jessica Friedenbach explained that psychiatric emergency services typically release a homeless person under 5150 hold back to the streets quickly for a lack of community resources. Friedenbach claimed that once an individual returns to streets without proper housing or treatment, his conditions persist or worsen, and most likely he will be detained again under 5150, and this time he can be put into jail.

SB 1045 does not promise secured housing and health services

SB 1045 also fails to promise secured housing and wraparound services for conserved individuals. Currently, there is a continuous need for more beds in medical facilities and long waitlists for services and supportive housing. An individual should not have to be gravely mentally disabled in order to get housing and medical services. People who have been waiting for a long time to get medical services and housing should not be pushed back because the city decides to put conserved individuals first in the waitlists.

The City has not been spending the budget wisely

In addition, there is no need to implement SB 1045 if the city uses funds wisely to renovate the current mental health care system.  The funds that would be discussed in regard to SB 1045 at the hearing at the Senate Appropriations Committee on May 14^th should instead be allocated to acquiring more beds and resources within mental health services.  Implementing SB 1045 will require extra police effort, which means extra funds for dispatching the police force, which is unnecessary use of their time and the budget.  In Street Sheet’s “CA Threatens to Turn Back the Clock on Mental Health Care,” a contributor, Alex Bernard mentioned current conservatorship law faces “insufficient funds” as the city has ran out of places to put conserved clients.

Instead of expanding the current law to detain those with mental illness, the city must use funds wisely to create more facilities and safe places for them to stay. In San Francisco Chronicle’s  “The Street’s Sickest, Costliest: The Mentally Ill,” Jacob Kaminker, PhD in Psychology and the head of the Psychological Association, also questioned the city’s priority, “Are we going to offer better services to these people? (homeless individuals) or are we going to spend that money on law enforcement…?” The underlying issue is not that there is lack of policing of individuals with mental illness, and the city needs to stop spending unnecessary money on law enforcement of homeless individuals. The real issue is that there needs to be a safe place for homeless individuals with mental illness to stay where they can have an uninterrupted medical support system.

Works Cited

San Francisco Board of Supervisors, Budget and Legislative Analyst. Performance Audit of the Department of Public Health Behavioral Health Services. 19 April 2018.
https://sfbos.org/sites/default/files/041918_SF_MA_Behavioral_Health_Services.pdf

Friedenback, Jennifer. “Expanded Conservatorships: The New Trauma Detentions.” Street Sheet, 5 Dec 2018. https://www.streetsheet.org/?p=4774

Barnard, Alex. “CA Threatens to Turn Back the Clock on Mental Health Care.” Street Sheet, 1 Feb 2019. https://www.streetsheet.org/?p=4867

This is Part 3 of 4. For the next part, please click here