I have a question for you.
What do you think will happen first:
1. California and its 58 counties will solve the double dilemma/failure of homelessness and inadequate mental health care, or
2. We will discover that aliens really exist.
My money is on the aliens. They are already among us, especially in Mendoland.
Six weeks ago, the Supreme Court ruled that state and local governments have the authority to enact laws and regulations prohibiting people from sleeping or camping on sidewalks, in shopping malls, in residential areas, and in public parks and on state, city and county property.
I think the Supreme Court’s decision is a much-needed step in the right direction (even a blind pig finds a truffle now and again) and should bring some sanity, common sense and responsibility back to a process that had spiraled out of control and was serving no one, including the homeless.
Governor Gav Newsom is urging local governments to step up their game after the U.S. Supreme Court gave cities and counties the green light to clear homeless encampments and ban homeless people from living and sleeping in public spaces.
Newsom issued an executive order directing state authorities to take action to clear encampments on state property and urging local governments to do the same.
“With the Supreme Court’s decision, we now have no excuse,” Newsom said. “With this executive order, we want to further advance that paradigm and create the sense of urgency needed for local authorities to do their jobs.”
Under the order, state authorities must give residents at least 48 hours’ notice before clearing a camp and provide them with at least 60 days’ storage for their belongings. Authorities must also seek services from local organizations for displaced residents. However, camps that pose an “imminent threat” to life, health, safety or infrastructure can be cleared immediately.
We are now seeing local governments in other counties and cities taking certain steps to exercise their legally restored authority to address homeless problems. However, the actions of San Francisco Mayor London Breed angered our sheriff.
Here is the story.
This week, Mendocino County Sheriff Matt Kendall said via Facebook, “On Thursday, Ms. Breed instructed city officials to offer bus passes to homeless people before providing them with a bed in a shelter or other services. This is what we in police work call a ‘hint’ of things to come. I had heard this was coming and had serious concerns about us being just a few counties north and an easy drop off point for Greyhound, so I tried to set up a meeting with the mayor. After several emails back and forth and a lot of arguing, I was told she was too busy to meet with anyone, too busy for a simple phone call.
Pretty frustrated, I gave up and moved on. Now it’s time to prepare for an influx of people who are likely suffering from multiple issues, including addiction and mental health disorders. Additionally, we’re likely to see people in our communities who have been allowed to behave in quite antisocial ways and who simply don’t have the staff or resources to deal with those issues. In San Francisco, the genie was let out of the bottle under the guise of compassion (which frankly didn’t seem compassionate at all to me). When they start their ‘busing to happiness’ program, I fear several less affluent districts will have a hard time getting the genie back in the bottle.”
While Sheriff Kendall is rightly upset that San Francisco Mayor Breed refuses to take a single call from him about her plan to bus the homeless out of town, he needn’t worry about her abusive behavior. She won’t even talk to her own sheriff.
Breed has been on a kamikaze mission for four years to defund San Francisco law enforcement. She calls it “reform,” which is nonsense unless you consider open-air drug dealing, rising crime rates, and civic insecurity as reform. She is a characterless, politically correct ideologue incapable of addressing complex issues like homelessness and the larger struggle between providing life-saving care and services to the homeless (who often refuse help) and balancing that reality with the other reality of the need and sworn commitment to maintaining public safety.
If you haven’t had a chance, check out my latest post in a series on the homelessness and mental health crisis in this state and county (“The Real State of the Homelessness Crisis, In Case You Want to Know”).
People need to wake up and realize why all of these programs and the billions and billions of dollars spent on them have resulted in complete failure. The answer has always been right in front of us, but most people, for some reason, seem content to just talk these issues to death.
A case in point is this district, where the board of supervisors and its homeless and mental health services staff have been holding public meetings to discuss these issues for years. The meetings are always packed with charts, graphs, mind-boggling amounts of data, staff presentations and non-reports.
I challenge anyone to explain to me or anyone else the performance of this county with its numerous homeless programs and the successes that have been achieved over the last 20 years of disbursing millions of dollars to private and/or public-private entities that provide various services to the homeless.
What have we learned over the years? We have learned that the official view of the county government, that is, the Board of Supervisors and its exceedingly hard-working staff, is that almost everything is working great and the results are mostly successful. The few things that are not yet working properly are delayed due to lack of funding. Other than that, everything is just right, thank you, and now go away.
Jim Shields is editor and publisher of the Mendocino County Observer, [email protected], longtime district manager of the Laytonville County Water District and chairman of the Laytonville Area Municipal Advisory Council. Listen to his radio show, “This and That,” every Saturday at noon on KPFN 105.1 FM, also streamed live: http://www.kpfn.org
