Gov. seeks to cut mental services for homeless

Source: L.A. Times

Schwarzenegger says ending the acclaimed program would save $55 million annually toward $3-billion budget gap.
By Lee Romney and Scott Gold, Times Staff Writers
July 14, 2007


A nationally lauded program that has helped thousands of mentally ill homeless men and women break the cycle of psychiatric hospitalization, jail time and street life is now on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's list of budget cuts. The governor has proposed eliminating Integrated Services for Homeless Adults With Serious Mental Illness, which receives $55 million annually, as part of his attempt to close a budget gap estimated at more than $3 billion.

Mental health advocates, clients and concerned legislators are lobbying fiercely to save the program, which served as the blueprint for California's ongoing efforts to radically retool the state's mental health system.

They have pledged to sue the administration if they fail, contending that the cut would violate the 2004 voter-approved Proposition 63, which aimed to remake the state's mental health system in the image of the homeless program's "whatever it takes" style of treatment, and prohibits the state from reducing mental health funding below its commitment at the time the measure passed.

Proposition 63 channels funds from a 1% income tax on Californians earning more than $1 million a year to mental health care and will ultimately bring billions of dollars into a starved system. But advocates fear that the gains will be neutralized if successful existing programs are cut with the other hand.


Read more: http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-me-mental14jul14,1,3043707.story?track=rss

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For those in California, perhaps this might affect you or someone you know.

n/t

..you *are* calling the program to slash the budget for mental health care for the homeless "reaganesque," and not me, right?

:shrug:

when all the poor people die off and quit whining?

:sarcasm:

realized it was Schwartzenegger we're talking about...

I guess Arnie is just trying to follow in his footsteps.

They don't vote, don'tcha know. :eyes:

:eyes:

along with the fact that a society can be judged by how well the least among them are treated.

let your imagination run wild on this one -- the damage could be violence to another person or child. often it's property damage from squatting. arson is common. prostitution and self-medication -- public drug use. and everywhere the homeless mentally ill congregate -- public parks, beaches, downtown -- no one else is going to be safe. so -- save the 55 million and sacrifice your public life. nice.

then again -- he'll just be catching up with the rest of the US who already have no mental health safety net. just like here in Florida. i lived next to a public park in a historic neighborhood where the mentally ill congregated. i watched them from my window every day and night. i was scared shitless some nights, walking my dogs. living with the homeless insane is a way of life here.

they get kicked out ASAP. The treatment methods are primarily incarceration, release, then incarceration again.

It is a vicious cycle.

I have a sister who would be a bag lady homeless if it were not for my hands on in administering her maintenance, social security, medicare, etc.

The poor homeless with no one to care are non-persons.

Cut off services to the most vulnerable, and the ones who are least able to advocate for themselves. Who cares? They're not important anyway. :sarcasm:

The Democratic controlled legislature will never let it see the light of day.

everywhere! More evidence that the Replublikan party is NOT for the people! k & r!

:mad:

It's like their fetish for Social Security. IMO, that's one of the most wildly successful government programs in history. It's very existance disproves the whole fabric of "compassionate conservativism." It's goal was to alleviate poverty in old age, and it has helped countless millions of the aged to live in relative comfort, instead of starving to death.

Public utilities have a long history of providing power at low cost to millions of people all around the country. Nope, nobody is making money off of that. Gotta 'privatize,' or more accurately, privateer.

This is just one more shot at dismantling government programs that actually do the jobs they were designed to do.

When they can't prove that the program is actually failing and suspect that it might, gasp, actually succeed, they just defund. :shrug:

edited for spelling

"California environmental official quits, citing meddling by Schwarzenegger's office

(AP) - SACRAMENTO, California-The executive director of a California agency charged with implementing a landmark global warming law resigned, saying Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's office made it impossible for her to do her job.

Catherine Witherspoon's resignation comes days after the California Air Resources Board's chairman, Robert Sawyer, was ousted by Schwarzenegger."

http://news.findlaw.com/ap/o/51/07-03-2007/28c6000df70e2cbe.html

Don't believe this fucker. Don't ever believe him...

Didn't CA do this to some degree back in the 80's?

:sarcasm:

It's pretty disgusting when a multi-millionaire wants to "balance" the budget on the back of the most vulnerable members of society.

And I've never been one who hated Arnie the way that some do. I was just glad the guy wasn't one of those rabid religious wackos the Repugs are so fond of. I had hope for the guy, to be honest.

Sheesh.

:(

but I don't see how anyone could have had hope for Ahnuld. After all, he was installed in what amounted to a legal coup, for the purpose of canning the Enron investigation (which he promptly did). He's just like Reagan-- a meathead actor who made it to the governor's mansion just because too many voters in California are wowed by celebrity.

There's 30 million people in California. That's about $100 per year in extra taxes for every man, woman and child in this state to close the budget gap. That's less than $10 a month. Less than $10 per month can save these people's lives and probably the lives of others that will be destroyed when they resort to lives of crime.

But Republicans are such cheap, selfish pricks that they'd rather let people die that spend a measly $10 per month. God I hate them with every blood fiber in my being.

And the truth is we wouldn't even have to raise taxes to close the budget gap. Just cut corporate welfare, and this state would be rolling in dough.

dump those from the hospitals and cut programs for the homeless so that he can afford more in the budget for prisons. Didn't I hear that Arnie was up to elbows in private donations from those that want to build more privately owned prisons?

Well it does seem that the review was to up in June 2007 here is the link.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/state/20061221-1720-ca-californiaprisons.html

I just wonder if this is how he proposes to offset cost because it sounds like he wants to add mental health facilities to the prison system (not that it is a bad idea) but not at the cost of cutting the budget for the homeless. :shrug:

people.

Hooray for Herr Gropenator, a true hero of the downtrodden.

sad, ill, homeless people.

Welcome illegal aliens with open arms, while stomping on mentally ill Americans.

Gotta have that cheap labor in Auschwitz-fornia, don't you? :mad:

:nuke:

Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is following in the foot steps of Republican President Ronald Reagan.

In the mid 1980’s, President Reagan emptied our public mental institutions, sending thousands of mentally ill people to our street corners. Now Arnold Schwarzenegger has decided he wants to remove the funds for the Integrated Services for Homeless Adults With Serious Mental Illness program.

This program costs $55 million a year and is worth every penny spent in the help it gives to homeless people who are mentally ill. But since the mentally ill aren’t likely Republican voters, it would seem they are worthless in Arnold’s eyes

Schwarznegger, who ran on an election campaign promise to bring more children into health services programs, cut the funding almost immediately upon retaining the governor’s mansion. His method of governing balances the state’s budget on the backs of the weak, the helpless, the elderly and the young.

He has removed money from programs for the doctors who care for the poor and cut recreation funds for mentally retarded children. He has said “he won’t cut funding for prosthetics”. Apparently he wants no excuses for physically disabled people not to work and pay their payroll taxes!

What kind of monsters are we, if as a society we leave the seriously mentally ill to wander the streets of our towns and cities with no help?

If you have no compassion for their plight; then just look at the crime problem this budget cut will produce. If we don’t spend this small amount of money now, our already bloated prison annual budget of $5,000,000,000,000 (five billion dollars) will grow. The payment we will then make won’t be just in money, but in the shattered lives that will undoubtedly occur.

Shame on you Arnold Schwarzenegger for proposing such an inhumane budget cut and shame on us if we allow this to happen.

This just continues their attitude, without money your worth less than livestock.

Mental Healthcare with Medicaid is already under attack. Republicans put in a new benchmark program that releases it from federal entitlement guarantees. If anyone knows how the Medicaid program works it's barely, just enough to meet the entitlements and then usually court ordered. What's scary is I thought California had some pretty tough advocacy groups - or this may not have even gotten the article.

The stupid part is it costs 3x's more to house them in jail. So what's the purpose? Just for them to feel a little more privileged?
I don't get it.

channeling that fuck ronald ray-gun again...

at the prison-industrial complex -- the new home for the mentally ill in California...

Fuck him and the hummer he rode in on...

Just disgusting. :grr:

I've never understood it. How could she SLEEP with that compassionate conservative hypocrite.

...Der Gropenfuhrer has decided he's Republican again. :grr: