Growing up in Ukiah/Redwood Valley during the 80’s, there were always a handful of street people. They were mostly benign and often had quite colorful personalities. Occasionally they met tragic outcomes, such as was the case with Marvin Noble being shot by Ukiah Police Department in 1998 or Larry Long AKA “Elvis” who was robbed, assaulted, then murdered by being thrown off the Talmage bridge in 1996. Neither of these men were homeless.
Today, Mendocino County is experiencing an epidemic of homelessness intertwined with drug addiction and mental illness at an unprecedented scale that is seemingly increasing. The effects of this is tragic on a personal level with Mendocino County’s per capita rate of suicide, OD deaths and hospitalizations being much higher than the state average. It’s becoming painfully obvious that the effects are spreading throughout the community in the form of people camping in public and private spaces; burglaries/robberies/petty theft affecting persons, homes and businesses are increasing; areas becoming blighted with drug paraphernalia, trash, and human excrement. I have passed people on Perkins Street being attended to by medical personnel because they are suffering a drug overdose while I was taking my children to school. I have walked local creeks finding them littered with used hypodermic needles, human excrement and people openly abusing drugs. I have broken up and cleaned up multiple encampments from property I manage and it has become often enough that it is now a normal part of my job. As a volunteer firefighter, I have responded to overdoses, administered Narcan, performed CPR and sometimes covered the victim with a blanket after failing to revive them. We, as a community, have become too tolerant and accustomed to the situation. We have become so accepting of it that when people openly complain about the situation, they are often attacked for lacking compassion. Many of these things, such as our creeks being littered with excrement and needles, cannot and should not be tolerated. They should be seen as a crisis. We should be responding to and intervene in the emergency that it is.
There are times in a person’s life where they suffer a tragedy or event that makes it hard, if not impossible, to care for themselves. As a result of these traumas, which are often out of our control, people fall victim to drug addiction, mental illness, or both. That renders them unable to properly care for themselves and they resort to self harm. As a kind, compassionate community, we are morally obligated to help them return to a place where they can care for themselves or we must care for them. This moral obligation does not mean we should accept actions and behaviors that expand beyond self harm into harming other people, the community or the environment. When someone acts in a way that harms others or the community at large, there should be consequences regardless of it being intentional or not. Allowing the har to continue is not humane nor compassionate. Help in the form of therapy and substance abuse treatment should be offered to those willing and able to accept it. Those not willing or able to accept help should be involuntarily institutionalized. The form of institutionalization should be appropriate, used as sparingly as possible. Institutionalization comes in many forms from a 72 hour psychiatric hold at a PHF unit, being incarcerated in jail, or being committed to a mental health facility.
Currently, the efforts to combat the homelessness crisis are not enough and it’s not from lack of funding. Looking at the County budget, Mendocino County alone is throwing tens of millions of dollars a year at the problem. The state of California has spent around $24 billion to combat homelessness since 2019. The system we have has evolved into an industry that has an vested interest in maintaining the status quo to the point where we should be questioning if the funding is efficiently supporting successful programs that are achieving measurable results or, are we caught in a loop of repeatedly funding ineffectual programs. Homelessness is on the rise in the state and has reached such a level that some areas, such as San Francisco, are bussing their unhoused to other communities. This isn’t solving the problem, this is just shifting the burden to other communities. Instead of shifting the problem and blame, the issue must be confronted. Our community cannot accommodate or afford to deal with the problem we have now, much less handle more. We must set a limit of what we can handle and enforce that boundary. It is time we put up the proverbial “no vacancy” sign, assess our homeless population and prioritize those who have a connection here. Those that do not meet whatever criteria we have set, need to be sent elsewhere.
In the development of such a criteria, I believe we should prioritize those that are willing and able to be helped. There is a limited capacity of services available to help people get back on track. In the meantime, those waiting to access services need to be somewhere. Living in creeks, along the railroad tracks, on private property where they are not welcome, in their cars on the side of the road is not appropriate and neither is jail. I propose that an area(s) be identified to establish a sanctioned homeless encampment, a refugee camp of sorts, replete with security, bathrooms, showers, etc in order to establish a safe place for those that are awaiting their opportunity to access services such as a residential treatment center, a homeless shelter and to keep the community safe from the byproducts of unsanctioned camping.
Our community needs to have a conversation about where unhoused people can be. Our elected officials need to commit the resources necessary to ensure these places don’t become public health hazards and allow those that need the assistance a measure of human dignity. The assistance needs to come with the expectation that the persons needing it will make an effort to become self reliant again. Right now, it’s up to the individual and it’s chaos. By default of not making a decision, which is in fact a decision, we are deciding where they can’t be. Homeless people are setting up camps wherever they can. Property owners then react by evicting them, driving them to public spaces such as creeks. It’s like a dog chasing its own tail. We are all expending a great deal of effort and resources without addressing the problem much less solving it.
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