California Gov. Gavin Newsom released a new proposal to allow counties to intervene with homeless individuals and remove them from the streets into a system called the “CARE Court” that would refer them to mental health services.
The proposal reverses decades of refusal by the state to allow homeless people to be involuntarily committed, though it takes what Newsom describes as a more “compassionate” approach than was taken through the first half of the twentieth century.
In a statement, Newsom explained:
CARE Court does not wait until someone is hospitalized or arrested before providing treatment. CARE Court will provide an opportunity for a range of people, including family members, first responders, intervention teams, and mental health service providers, among others, to refer individuals suffering from a list of specific ailments, many of them unhoused, and get them into community-based services.
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CARE Court offers court-ordered individualized interventions and services, stabilization medication, advanced mental health directives, and housing assistance – all while remaining community-based. Plans can be up to 12-24 months.
Within the Care COURT, homeless people would have access to legal representation, so that whatever decisions are made are self-directed.
Newsom explained further: “In addition to their full clinical team, the client-centered approach also includes a public defender and a supporter to help individuals make self-directed care decisions.”
The plan echoes successful innovations at the municipal level, such as a “Homelessness Court” in Redondo Beach. Newsom explained further:
The CARE Court framework was created using the evidence that many people can stabilize, begin healing, and exit homelessness in less restrictive, community-based care settings. The plan focuses on people with schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorders, who may also have substance use challenges, and who lack medical decision-making capacity, and advances an upstream diversion from more restrictive conservatorships or incarceration.The framework provides individuals with a clinically appropriate, community-based and court-ordered Care Plan consisting of culturally and linguistically competent county mental health and substance use disorder treatment services. These include short-term stabilization medications, wellness and recovery supports, and connection to social services, including a housing plan. Services are provided to the individual through an outpatient model while they live in the community.
As CalMatters.org noted, Newsom’s CARE Court differs from an earlier plan, Laura’s Law, in that it would require counties to participate, once the plan was passed by the state legislature. Only 218 people were helped in one year by Laura’a Law.
In recent years, the state and various cities within it have tried to address homelessness by using pandemic funding to rent or buy hotel rooms, and offering people on the street accommodation and access to services.
But the system created a perverse incentive: homeless people could be drawn to California by the promise of free housing, and would not address underlying problems such as mental illness, drug abuse, and poverty.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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