Monday, March 27, 2006
Homelessness and Awareness
Story by Katrina Van Loan
To the observant, it seems that there are some serious issues with the current trend of cutting funding to social programs in order to whittle down America’s bloated budget deficit.
One of these issues is continuing homelessness, and the shameful abandonment of our mentally ill citizens on the streets. When Ronald Reagan de-institutionalized thousands of mentally ill patients, he essentially abandoned them to wander the streets or eke out an existence in subsidized housing without the care their illness demanded. Regardless of the gravity and the utter wrongness of this situation, mentally ill people are still not receiving the care they need, not only in California, but across the entire country.
Last week, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported hundreds of sick mental patients living in squalor in the city, largely ignored by the community and authority figures.
Despite continued media coverage of this disgraceful matter, one of the largest problems with the way San Francisco (and indeed, the entire Bay Area) treats its homeless population and mentally ill continues to be the lack of care available for them. Although Gavin Newsom’s “Care not Cash” program has a few good points, it’s still just another bandage on an open wound. To treat this open wound, we need to addess the underlying problems, not the symptoms. This means ponying up the necessary cash for social programs designed to help homeless people get back on track, it means building a few less bombs in order to build a few more shelters, and it requires looking inward at our own social problems rather than concentrating fearfully on foreign events.
As citizens, we need to continue to inform ourselves of current issues and we need to have the critical reasoning to look at all sides of every problem, as well as maintaining a balance between “what’s current” and “what’s not.” This means taking a good hard look at domestic issues, and it means not putting the image of that drooling, vacant bag woman you just passed out of your mind in favor of worrying about whatever foreign issue is on the newspaper’s front page today.
While I have nothing against supporting our troops, what about supporting our homeless? What about supporting the unsupervised mentally ill? Why are there no special ribbons on display to raise awareness of the lack of funding for abandoned mentally sick people, for families living on the streets? With this week marking the third anniversary of the Iraq war, it’s embarassing that our country spends so much money on foreign issues and so little on helping its own citizens.
To the observant, it seems that there are some serious issues with the current trend of cutting funding to social programs in order to whittle down America’s bloated budget deficit.
One of these issues is continuing homelessness, and the shameful abandonment of our mentally ill citizens on the streets. When Ronald Reagan de-institutionalized thousands of mentally ill patients, he essentially abandoned them to wander the streets or eke out an existence in subsidized housing without the care their illness demanded. Regardless of the gravity and the utter wrongness of this situation, mentally ill people are still not receiving the care they need, not only in California, but across the entire country.
Last week, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported hundreds of sick mental patients living in squalor in the city, largely ignored by the community and authority figures.
Despite continued media coverage of this disgraceful matter, one of the largest problems with the way San Francisco (and indeed, the entire Bay Area) treats its homeless population and mentally ill continues to be the lack of care available for them. Although Gavin Newsom’s “Care not Cash” program has a few good points, it’s still just another bandage on an open wound. To treat this open wound, we need to addess the underlying problems, not the symptoms. This means ponying up the necessary cash for social programs designed to help homeless people get back on track, it means building a few less bombs in order to build a few more shelters, and it requires looking inward at our own social problems rather than concentrating fearfully on foreign events.
As citizens, we need to continue to inform ourselves of current issues and we need to have the critical reasoning to look at all sides of every problem, as well as maintaining a balance between “what’s current” and “what’s not.” This means taking a good hard look at domestic issues, and it means not putting the image of that drooling, vacant bag woman you just passed out of your mind in favor of worrying about whatever foreign issue is on the newspaper’s front page today.
While I have nothing against supporting our troops, what about supporting our homeless? What about supporting the unsupervised mentally ill? Why are there no special ribbons on display to raise awareness of the lack of funding for abandoned mentally sick people, for families living on the streets? With this week marking the third anniversary of the Iraq war, it’s embarassing that our country spends so much money on foreign issues and so little on helping its own citizens.
# posted by Phil Deez @ 11:43 AM 