Public Comment

I have mixed feelings, leaning toward dismay, about Newsom's new "CARE Court" bill, which is now signed into law. It is intended to force noncompliant mental health consumers into treatment, and this is presumed to eliminate or ease homelessness. But it won't do that. In order for mentally ill people and others to be housed, you must provide housing that we can reasonably pay for on the scant amount of benefits we get. 

This legislation assumes the cause of homelessness is noncompliance with treatment of mentally ill people. In some instances, this is accurate. Yet in most instances, a homeless person isn't mentally impaired, and they merely can't keep pace with the amount of money you must earn to live in the Bay Area. 

Additionally, this seems like a roundabout effort to jail people for being mentally ill or for being homeless. Jails and prisons are sources of profit for the people who build them and who work in them. Those who build or work in the jail systems have a stake in the results of this new law. Since counties aren't going to have enough resources to house mentally ill people who comply with the court orders, jailing could end up as the default. This is an excuse for bulldozing the encampments, which many people probably believe are unsightly. 

It amounts to jailing people for being poor, for having a mental illness, or both. It will create greater fear among mentally ill people, and many of us are scared enough already. CARE Court is too much court and not enough care. 

CARE Court conjures to my mind an image of Jesus in shackles facing Caesar. 

Many Californians won't mind it. They want to see clean, safe-appearing streets, sidewalks, and bridges. Yet this is deceptive. Because tucked away somewhere will be the lives of the mentally ill who couldn't fulfill their requirements to stay liberated and potentially housed. Such mentally ill people will never be able to get the better of their illnesses because they will be locked up. 

I have been jailed. It was the worst thing that ever happened to me. It was worse than being threatened by two gunmen when I worked in Oakland, when they wanted to rob the supermarket where I worked night shift. That was unbelievably terrifying. Jail is worse than that. This could be a "Trojan Horse" in which the stated purpose differs from the actual purpose. 

It could make our streets look cleaned up, and this will bring visual relief to many who live in California. But at what cost? 

The entitlements received by disabled people will not pay the rent of an apartment or a room in a house. We need some method of providing a decent place to live that a disabled person can actually pay, out of what we get. And this is a tall order. And HUD housing makes it too easy to become displaced. Section 8 Housing is risky business, because if you don't comply well enough with their rules, or sometimes even if you do, the subsidy could be lost. Section 8 doesn't do anything to stop evictions. And when evicted, you need to have deposit money for another place, you need to move all of your belongings, and you need to deal with an entirely new set of circumstances in the new housing, assuming you can jump through the hoops adequately to get into a unit. 

Rather than providing housing that we could actually afford, CARE Court blames the individuals who find they have become homeless, because according to the assumptions behind this law, you were displaced because you didn't take your medication. 

The issue isn't about civil rights, it is about the impracticality of this law, and how it provides a non-solution. Governor Newsom, your policies resemble those of Donald Trump a bit too much.