Reply #34: transcribed for closer scrutiny

[gottaB]

Let me, let me tell what we should do about the homelessness in this country. A lot of it is what we've done in our state but there's more to be done.

There are two catagories of homeless, basically. One are families and individuals who are reasonably healthy and who are one paycheck away from disaster. The paycheck los--gets lost, the family splits up, some catastrophe happens and they're out on the street.

That's not hard to stop. We have a program in our state where if you are about to be put on the street we will pay your rent for one or two months. Because it's a lot cheaper for the state to pay the rent of a family for a couple of months than it is to let them be thrown out, and then try to find housing for them, and have to go to the shelter and all that stuff. So it's just a sensible program. If you had a program like that in the federal government it would cost a little more money but it would save us a fortune.

Secondly, two thirds of the homeless either have a substance abuse program , a mental illness, or both. That's a much more difficult crowd. Here's what we do about that in our state--and we don't do it as successfully as we should but at least we do it.

Many of those people can help themselves if they have a little help. So we have set up single room occupancy type situations, with staff 24 hours a day for social services. They can support a number of people who just need to be reminded to take their medications, helped a little bit trying to get a job, or with SSI, or whatever. That can be helped.

Then we have a very hardcore group of people --and this is a very difficult issue, and it's a constitutional issue--who are either seriously impaired alcholics, or seriously mental ill, mentally ill. They go to the state hospital, they stop tak--they take their meds `cause we can make them. They come out after a while they stop taking their meds. And then, and then they relapse. And every time they relapse it's a cycle that goes down and down and down.

We passed a law which is very controversial, because many believe it's a an in an in infringe, ah infringemen, infringement on civil liberties. And it's one of those areas that's really tough. We passed a law that says we made Medicaid people without their consent --or mandatory medication-- when they're out of the hospital. Now here's the dilemma that--with this kind of a law--and it's being held up by the courts because the civil liberties are being de debated. If this is this a violation of civil liberties? It probably is to manda--to medicate people against their consent. On the other hand if we don't do it they have a relapse, they go to the hospital, and everytime they come out they're a little worst off than they were, and it goes around and around and around.

So it's a really tough issue. Because if we medicate them against their consent they do all right, but if, if and--and that may well be an infringement on civil liberties. If we don't medicate them against their consent we know they're going to go down and down and down and down. And do they have choice to do that? And that's a very, very difficult issue.

We've got to have adequate funding, of course. But adequate funding is not enough for programs that don't work. One of the things that we did in our, that we did when I was governor, is we--and I had a Republican ah, Human Services Secretary who was incredibly helpful, because he benchmarked human services. He gave us goals. Reduction in teenage pregnancy. Reduction ah in alcohol abuse. Uh reduction in drug use. Reduction in dropout rates. And we could measure every county against the money we were giving them to--in terms of what they were doing. And, when the, when the trends weren't the way were supposed to be we went in and looked. Why? Are people not doing their jobs? Or are they not getting enough money? Or is there some extra factor?

That's what we need to do with the homeless and mental, mental illness and substance abusers, which are all closely tied together. We've got to figure out what works, fund the programs that work, stop funding the programs that don't work

It can be done, but it's going to take a real serious committment on the part of the United States government and the President of the United States to do it.