For over a century, the state had mental hospitals where those who could not care for themselves were cared for by the state. There certainly were abuses, but the vast majority of patients were cared for in a humane manner that respected their personal dignity.

In the 1970s, the movie One Flew Over The ****oo's Nest came out. Suddenly, closing these hospitals was all the rage. Liberals and the ACLU fought to get as many discharged as possible. The solution for these people's care was going to be these community based centers that could help people locally and keep them in their community. The state hospitals started closing down.

This was called deinstitutionalization.

Welp, then government does what government does and screwed up the community model. Liberals say too little funding - conservatives say too much waste - caused these centers to not function the way they were intended. And of course, the mentally ill just didn't avail themselves of the services (duh). So they just go to the street.

You can read a lot more here about the history of this shift here.

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2024/04/16/1244702372/could-the-u-s-force-treatment-on-mentally-ill-people-again

So where are we today? I work with a homeless charity in Fort Worth and am around homeless on a recurring basis. My experience is

• 1/3 of the guys are down on their luck and trying to, and eventually do, get on their feet
• 1/3 of the guys like having no responsibility and no cares and are right where they wanna be, and
• 1/3 are mentally deranged

The first two of these are little danger to society, other than petty crime. The last third need to be institutionalized for society's safety. They are stuck in a cycle of (1) go to jail for something, (2) get treated by some type of center, (3) released and told to come back for appointments, (4) go back to the streets and (5) repeat.

When you hear liberals pleading for more mental health spending - they are pleading for more money to be poured into this failed community center model. What we really need is to bring back state mental health hospitals. We then can focus helping that first third and ignoring that middle third (they don't want help).

This deinstitutionalization fad failed. Letting the mentally ill loose in the community is bound to fail. Just look at the videos of public defecation, nude street walking, public sex, etc, that litter the internet. The best thing for them, and for society, is to lock them up.

Think they shipped a bunch of people to place in Lubbock at some point and when they closed the doors they just left them in Lubbock.

Now within 5 minutes of a house being vacant you'll have squatters.

Group 1 should be helped temporarily by private charity, no government funding at all. Group 2: Bring back and enforce vagrancy laws. 6 months at the county/regional work farm to dry out and get enough physically hard work incentives to not want to come back. Bring back state asylums for Group 3.

Just common sense. Someday.

WBBQ74 said:

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Bring back and enforce vagrancy laws. 6 months at the county/regional work farm to dry out and get enough physically hard work incentives to not want to come back. Groups 1 and 2. Bring back state asylums for Group 3.

Just common sense. Someday.

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Group 1 are the ones who don't want to be homeless and there are charity programs to help them such as the Star of Hope and likely the program with which the OP is involved. They should be helped and not jailed, but they need to seek help.

For group 2, the easier you make it to be homeless, the more of group 2 you will have. Thus the vagrancy laws would reduce group 2 and make them some of them want to be group 1.

For group 3, the current situation is worse for them than being in institutions and certainly is worse for society. I think group 3 is larger than 1/3.

Again, the left picks the wrong side of a crucial issue. But there can be no doubt, deinstitutionalizing mentally ill people has caused great suffering on us all, including those who need to be institutionalized.

itsyourboypookie said:

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Think they shipped a bunch of people to place in Lubbock at some point and when they closed the doors they just left them in Lubbock.

Now within 5 minutes of a house being vacant you'll have squatters.

---

This is a real concern when you're trying to sell a vacant house in California.

My realtor stopped by every day to check my property.

Group 2 - homelessness is absolutely a choice
Group 3 - this is the reason we need to end public transportation - specifically busses in Los Angeles and BART in the Bay Area

More than once, I've seen the deranged walk up and just start raging on people while they're sitting outside in Studio City just trying to enjoy an In N Out Burger on their way to Universal Studios.

We don't really need more mental health institutions as much as we need more prisons. The vast majority of people who show up to a mental health hospital should either be in prison or just need a vacation from their current stressful life.

ts5641 said:

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Again, the left picks the wrong side of a crucial issue. But there can be no doubt, deinstitutionalizing mentally ill people has caused great suffering on us all, including those who need to be institutionalized.

---

One thing I didn't discuss was the efforts by liberals to blame conservatives to deinstitutionalization. I CLEARLY remember the democrats and ACLU being at the forefront of battling for closing state hospitals.

In fact, they're proud of it. "Dismantling enclaves of oppression" they called it

https://www.aclu.org/documents/aclu-history-dismantling-enclaves-oppression

Quote:

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Inspired by the 'rights revolution' of the 1960s, millions of ordinary people who suffered from oppression students, prisoners, soldiers, those with physical and developmental disabilities, and others discovered their own voices and began demanding fair treatment and personal dignity. The ACLU played an important role in breaking apart the 'enclaves of oppression' that held them back and shaping new-found expectations of freedom into principles of constitutional law.

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Not disagreeing with the op, but I don't want the government in 2024 in the mental hospital business. Certain conservative values would likely get you locked up in said institution.

Access to good mental health is a necessity for solving these difficult problems. Having said that, healing is a two way street, you must want to get better and that excludes many of the homeless. Same can be said for addicts and/or just the terminally lazy.

Soylent Green

win win

BTW - the charity I work with practices "urban farming". The guys rent a parcel and grow organic vegetables. We who support the charity buy a box of these vegetables each week for $30. The guys repay their plot rental fees, seeds, water, fertilizer expenses out of the money they make.

This charity's belief is the root of much homelessness is a sense of "aloneness" our society encourages. No family, no network, no church - guys just drift into it due to a number of factors. The idea is they gain a sense of connectedness with others through labor and the rewards they gain from it.

They have a pretty high rate of getting guys off the street. But of course, anyone they work with WANTS to get off the street.

Hobos travel, willing to work;
Tramps travel but avoids work if possible;
Bums neither travel or work

All are Democrats.

fc2112 said:

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ts5641 said:

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Again, the left picks the wrong side of a crucial issue. But there can be no doubt, deinstitutionalizing mentally ill people has caused great suffering on us all, including those who need to be institutionalized.

---

One thing I didn't discuss was the efforts by liberals to blame conservatives to deinstitutionalization. I CLEARLY remember the democrats and ACLU being at the forefront of battling for closing state hospitals.

In fact, they're proud of it. "Dismantling enclaves of oppression" they called it

https://www.aclu.org/documents/aclu-history-dismantling-enclaves-oppression

Quote:

---

Inspired by the 'rights revolution' of the 1960s, millions of ordinary people who suffered from oppression students, prisoners, soldiers, those with physical and developmental disabilities, and others discovered their own voices and began demanding fair treatment and personal dignity. The ACLU played an important role in breaking apart the 'enclaves of oppression' that held them back and shaping new-found expectations of freedom into principles of constitutional law.

---

---

Yep, after crowing about getting the institutions closed on civil rights issues, they now claim they were closed because Reagan cut their funding.

My experience running a temp service didn't have me dealing with the third group much, but I dealt with the first two groups every day.

I'm not against state mental hospitals but I believe catching issues early and dealing with them before they get to the point where institutionalizing someone is way more important . Problem is you need a whole lot of competent professionals to do that effectively and I'm not sure we have enough of them. It is a growing field tho .

fc2112 said:

---

For over a century, the state had mental hospitals where those who could not care for themselves were cared for by the state. There certainly were abuses, but the vast majority of patients were cared for in a humane manner that respected their personal dignity.

In the 1970s, the movie One Flew Over The ****oo's Nest came out. Suddenly, closing these hospitals was all the rage. Liberals and the ACLU fought to get as many discharged as possible. The solution for these people's care was going to be these community based centers that could help people locally and keep them in their community. The state hospitals started closing down.

This was called deinstitutionalization.

Welp, then government does what government does and screwed up the community model. Liberals say too little funding - conservatives say too much waste - caused these centers to not function the way they were intended. And of course, the mentally ill just didn't avail themselves of the services (duh). So they just go to the street.

You can read a lot more here about the history of this shift here.

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2024/04/16/1244702372/could-the-u-s-force-treatment-on-mentally-ill-people-again

So where are we today? I work with a homeless charity in Fort Worth and am around homeless on a recurring basis. My experience is

• 1/3 of the guys are down on their luck and trying to, and eventually do, get on their feet
• 1/3 of the guys like having no responsibility and no cares and are right where they wanna be, and
• 1/3 are mentally deranged

The first two of these are little danger to society, other than petty crime. The last third need to be institutionalized for society's safety. They are stuck in a cycle of (1) go to jail for something, (2) get treated by some type of center, (3) released and told to come back for appointments, (4) go back to the streets and (5) repeat.

When you hear liberals pleading for more mental health spending - they are pleading for more money to be poured into this failed community center model. What we really need is to bring back state mental health hospitals. We then can focus helping that first third and ignoring that middle third (they don't want help).

This deinstitutionalization fad failed. Letting the mentally ill loose in the community is bound to fail. Just look at the videos of public defecation, nude street walking, public sex, etc, that litter the internet. The best thing for them, and for society, is to lock them up.

---

And >90% suffer from addiction. I'm surprised you didn't mention that, which is a significant cause of homelessness.

More prisons and more mental institutions will lower crime.

State mental institutions are a no brainer. There are families that can be helped if mental health care was available to the worst of the worst folks.

I have a nephew that has significant mental issues. Sees demons and hears voices. He is very non compliant and easily freaks out. He is in his 30's now. When his parents pass and if the nephew is alive. He will end up on the streets or either be in jail.

Seattle's budget for the mentally illl drug addicts is over 50M a year. They supply them with methadone, a bagel, and orange juice everyday.

Walk around Seattle and you see psychotic episodes, people talking to themselves, fighting and yelling at passersby.

The 50M has done NOTHING for the mentally ill. It's just created falsely advertised positivity. It's bull*****

Texasclipper said:

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WBBQ74 said:

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Bring back and enforce vagrancy laws. 6 months at the county/regional work farm to dry out and get enough physically hard work incentives to not want to come back. Groups 1 and 2. Bring back state asylums for Group 3.

Just common sense. Someday.

---

Group 1 are the ones who don't want to be homeless and there are charity programs to help them such as the Star of Hope and likely the program with which the OP is involved. They should be helped and not jailed, but they need to seek help.

For group 2, the easier you make it to be homeless, the more of group 2 you will have. Thus the vagrancy laws would reduce group 2 and make them some of them want to be group 1.

For group 3, the current situation is worse for them than being in institutions and certainly is worse for society. I think group 3 is larger than 1/3.

---

I have heard some homeless advocates claim up to 40% of homeless persons are in group 3. I believe them in this instance. Additionally, the years of chronic drug abuse have created permanent mental disabilities. We can only wait for lawyers to line up and sue cities for not enforcing their camping laws, claiming this led to permanent mental drug-abuse disability for their clients.

Completely agree with OP. Need to bring them back with video oversight to prevent and prosecute abuse which caused the closing movement in the first place.

More prisons will not help. For the states that actually keep mentally ill people in prisons they do not get adequate treatment and when they get out they are still mentally ill and tend to get arrested again.

An old friend of mine was homeless for a while.

When his wife who was a hostess at a gentleman's club and he divorced, he locked up his house, buried the key in his yard, and went to live on the streets of Houston. The following winter, when it got cold enough, he went back to his house, dug up the key, and started living at home again.

Even after that, he had several friends who were still living on the streets.

One friend of his was a homeless guy who had taken a job as a janitor in an office building because they would let him sleep in the large equipment room. There was a little bit of furniture in there including a sofa and so he had a comfortable place to hang out. He was really thrilled to have a place to stay when all that he owned was a frying pan, the clothes that he was wearing, and a bicycle.

Another friend of his was a retired engineer who had a nice pension, but preferred to live in his car which was parked in an alley in Houston and barely used any of his pension money.

That friend of mine did use recreational drugs pretty heavily. More than twenty years ago, his girlfriend went over to his house one morning and found him in his bedroom with a bullet through his head and his hands tied together. It doesn't appear that the police investigated it much.