Frederick Column: Locking up the homeless

After years of failing to move the needle on chronic homelessness, California is now talking about a “new” solution. Actually, it is a very old solution: Forced treatment. 

Gov. Gavin Newsom, who talks in nothing but euphemisms, shrouded the key element of his “new” solution because it involves compelling the mentally ill and drug abusers into treatment. 

He’s calling it the “Community Assistance, Recovery and Empowerment Court or, wait for it, the CARE court with the power to put people against their will into treatment. Don’t call it incarceration. It’s just treatment with “supportive housing and wrap-around services.”

Kindness and compassion administered while a person is confined to “supportive housing.”

I’m making a little bit of fun about all this tip-toe language, but the governor is on the right track. You’re never going to clean up homelessness without dealing with drug abuse and mental illness. And you’re never going to get addicts and the mentally incapable to do what is best for themselves unless you, well, force them. 

It would work like this: The court orders a “tailored” plan involving some combination of housing, medication and services, and would offer the support of a full clinical team, as well as a public defender and a “supporter” who could “help a participant” make care decisions and prepare advanced mental health directives.

Unlike with conservatorships, in which a person can be held against their will indefinitely, “participation” by a CARE court would be time limited – one year, with the possibility of an additional one-year extension.

The California District Attorneys Association sees it for what it is. CEO, Greg Totten said: 

“This innovative and humane approach would help the thousands of Californians on the street suffering from mental illness who don’t have the wherewithal to volunteer for medical and psychiatric care.” 

Let’s talk plainly. If CARE courts get off the ground and work in any meaningful way to bring down chronic homelessness, a significant number of people currently wandering aimlessly on the streets of California and camping out in our parks will be locked up. In a kind sort of way, of course.

That’s the plan and it’s better than doing nothing.

B.S. = ‘BIDEN SCIENCE’

Less than a year ago, President Joe Biden misled the nation when he asserted that we are living in a “pandemic of the unvaccinated.” He also stupidly claimed that if you get vaccinated, you won’t get the COVID. 

I won’t further beat that dead horse  today, because the Biden Administration’s handling of the pandemic is a matter of record, much of it on video. Voters will ultimately decide whether to hold it against him, or not. 

What is important, however, is to periodically circle back on the facts as we know them. The key fact this week is this: As good as the vaccines are, they’re not 100% protection.

That’s a quote from Santa Cruz County Deputy Health Officer Dr. David Ghilarducci, who after a recent study of the Omicron wave uncovered an unsettling trend. 

An analysis showed that of COVID-19 deaths in the four deadliest weeks of the Delta and Omicron surges, the number of unvaccinated people who died were nearly identical, and far higher than the totals for the vaccinated. Even so, three times more vaccinated people died during the Omicron peak than during Delta’s peak.

This means that we’re seeing, as one health official said, “some chinks in the armor of vaccines that we didn’t see before.”

This is real-world science – not Biden Science. It is something we all need to understand should the future require it. 

ONE MORE THING

– Wine is now cheaper than gasoline. Drink, don’t drive!

– You know we live in a madly decadent world when “vanilla” means “plain.”

– If you don’t hear from me, I gave you up for Lent.

– The fact that my entire body cracks like a glowstick whenever I move and yet refuses to actually glow is very disappointing.

That’ll do it for today. Until next week, avoid soreheads, laugh a little and always question authority. 

(Sherman Frederick is the publisher of Marin’s community newspapers — the Novato Advance, San Rafael News-Pointer, Mill Valley Herald, Ross Valley Reporter, Twin City Times and the Sausalito Marin Scope. He is co-founder of Battle Born Media, a news organization dedicated to the preservation of community newspapers. You can reach him by email at shermfrederick@gmail.com.)