Next time you’re out and about, check out the homeless people you see. Ask yourself if you think they’re capable of living in a subsidized apartment by themselves, keeping it clean and safe, eating healthy, staying off drugs, living a basically normal life and respecting their neighbors.
In some cases, the answer is yes. But when the person is psychotic and hooked on drugs or booze, the answer is probably no.
This dilemma is at the heart of a debate taking place in the California Legislature. The state is experiencing a budget surplus counted in the tens of billions of dollars; that’s on top of additional billions pouring in from Washington, D.C. All this money presents opportunities to tackle homelessness that had not been previously available. The problem is that Democrats and Republicans differ over how it should be spent.
In general, you can portray the two sides this way: Democrats favor a “housing first” approach, in which all homeless people, including the severely psychotic, are simply given keys to subsidized apartments and told to take care of themselves. They may be able to find therapeutic treatment later, but, under the “housing first” model, housing comes, well, first, and treatment can wait. Republicans on the other hand see this as kind of stupid. The psychotic behaviors that landed homeless people on the streets in the first place are unlikely to disappear just because the person is given subsidized housing. So why not deal with the psychotic behavior, if not first, then at least coterminous with providing housing?
I tend to agree with the Republicans on this one, and it baffles me that Democrats don’t. One Republican idea is that the street teams that are popping up all over the place (such as in Project MACRO in Oakland) might include a law enforcement officer, along with social workers and paramedics. The cops would be there to keep everyone safe. But Democrats object to this because they don’t like cops and don’t want them involved in anything to do with homeless people. Oakland Assembly member Buffy Wicks objects to including law enforcement on street teams because “social workers…are in the best position to understand the challenges facing people experiencing homelessness.”
That may be true to a certain extent. But we’ve all seen enough ranters, delusional wanderers and potentially violent people to know that social workers aren’t going to be able to handle everyone. I know that the cops themselves don’t want to be called on to handle the crazies, but what this really comes down to is this: Sometimes, force is going to be required to stop psychotic people from harming themselves and us. And cops are the only ones who can apply that force.
I know it’s controversial to even suggest using duress on homeless people. Liberals scream about civil rights, about individual autonomy and all that. But human societies are built around the use of force. That’s why every civilization known to us throughout history has had some sort of police force, to compel non-compliant people who cannot or will not live by the accepted rules of conduct to do so, or—well, to deal with the consequences of refusal. In this current debate in the Legislature (and I include the Governor in this assessment), Democrats are going to have to give a little to meet Republicans halfway, which means Dems will have to agree that the most egregious psychotics cannot be allowed to wander the streets freely. Sometimes, public order and safety is more important than everybody’s civil rights.
Steve Heimoff