Gov. Newsom has asked for us to do what we can to educate people about his CARE Court proposal because it faces “a slog” in the Legislature, and could easily be defeated. As a supporter of CARE Court, here’s my case for it.
The way of I think of Community Assistance, Recovery and Empowerment (CARE) Court is as a rather conservative approach to homelessness, drug abuse and mentally ill people in the streets. By “conservative,” I mean that it is the first time in California that a Governor has said, in effect, that people who refuse to go into treatment for their own good may be compelled to, even to the point of detaining them against their will.
The substance of CARE Court is pretty simple: like other programs, both statewide and local, the program seeks to “connect people with a care team in the community” to provide “clinically prescribed, individualized treatment with supportive services, stabilizing medication, and a housing plan.”
There’s nothing radical about that. We hear the same goal from the City Council all the time. But what’s different this time is that, under the Governor’s plan, individuals can be detained “for up to 12 months, with periodic review hearings and subsequent renewal for up to another 12 months.” Participants who fail to successfully navigate CARE Court “may, under current law, be hospitalized or referred to conservatorship…”.
You can view this as a get-tough approach to mentally ill people in the streets, which is what the Coalition for a Better Oakland has been calling for. In truth, it won’t impact the majority of homeless people—that’s not what CARE Court is about. Rather, it focuses on people “with schizophrenia spectrum or other psychotic disorders.”
Anyone who lives in Oakland, especially the Flatlands, knows exactly who these people are: the ranter wandering the sidewalks, the half-naked lady slumped against a building, the guy with the middle finger walking in the midst of traffic. The majority of these individuals are not dangerous to society, but they are nuisances, a sign of societal meltdown, and more importantly, a society that claims to care about its people cannot in good conscience allow them to go untreated. That is why the essence of CARE Court is compassion.
The opposition to CARE Court is from the usual suspects, including civil rights advocates, who argue that everyone, including the mentally ill, has the right to do whatever they want, and that the State cannot be allowed to become authoritarian, by limiting that right. For example, Human Rights Watch has declared its “strong opposition.” They claim that “CARE Court promotes a system of involuntary, coerced treatment…that will, in practice, simply remove unhoused people with perceived mental health conditions from the public eye without effectively addressing those mental health conditions and without meeting the urgent need for housing.”
Other opponents include mental health groups, like the California Association of Mental Health Peer-Run Organizations, which opposes what it calls “forced rehabilitation or conservatorships, both of which are part of CARE Court.” Then there are the disability rights advocates. They blasted CARE Court for, among other things, not providing housing to address homelessness and for “perpetuating institutional racism,” and they claim that “adequately-resourced intensive voluntary outpatient treatment is more effective than court-ordered treatment.”
Anyone who knows how the Legislature works knows how powerful this complex of civil rights advocates, disability activists and mental health professionals is. The Legislature, overwhelmingly Democratic, from coastal urban cities, is afraid of them.
But remember the definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. The opponents of CARE Court are essentially saying, Let’s continue to do what we’ve always done—which is to allow mentally ill people to wander the streets—and hope that somehow, something will change.
That is not a viable or honest approach. It has clearly failed. Governor Newsom, in my opinion, has done a bold thing in proposing CARE Court. Lord knows, it’s a small enough thing to do, just a drop in the bucket. But at least it’s a start. If you agree, please write your State Senator and Assembly person and tell them you support the Governor’s CARE Court.
Steve Heimoff