This just in: Scott Wiener not always wrong!

Photo: Dyami Serna

This is a companion piece to the previous post on homelessness.

Good to learn that Scott Wiener isn't always wrong, just most of the time. Below Dick Spotswood points out that since homelessness is a statewide problem the state needs to help local governments pay to deal with it:

I’ve been critical of state Sen. Scott Wiener’s misguided pieces of legislation, Senate Bills 827 and 828, that attempt to usurp local land use control to force building high-density housing. It’s only fair that when the San Francisco Democrat co-authors a creative law addressing a huge statewide issue — chronic homelessness — he earns my kudos.

Wiener and Sen. Henry Stern, D-Canoga Park, have introduced legislation to strengthen California conservatorship laws. SB 1045 expands use of conservatorships to protect those substance abusers and mentally ill who are a threat to the health and safety of themselves and potentially others...

I recently rode Amtrak from Oakland to Southern California with members of Mill Valley Rotary. In communities along the line we saw tent camps and squalor. Whether it was prosperous Santa Barbara, working-class Salinas or sad West Oakland, desperate human beings living near mounds of garbage were common. Downtown San Rafael and out-of-sight sections of East Marin experience the same phenomena.

Most of the chronic homeless are mentally ill or addicted. The help they need is the 21st century version of long-closed state hospitals: “supportive housing” that includes detox and psychiatric care.

The legislation’s premise is that counties will provide that supportive housing and residential facilities to keep these sick folks safe and off the street until they recover.

SB 1045’s weakness is fiscal. The state needs to pay its fair share by providing participating counties with a 50-50 match to create new supportive housing. 

None of this is cheap, but the cost in human lives and loss of quality of life in communities where miserable tent camps proliferate makes it worthwhile. The fiscal and moral cost of doing nothing is high (Kudos to Sen. Wiener for addressing chronic homelessness).