Consider what’s more humane: leaving someone who’s mentally ill and homeless living in squalor and danger on the streets; or taking that person off the streets for help, perhaps even onto a road to a better life?
Clearly, it’s the latter. And that’s the promise and hope of Senate Bill 3139, just passed by the state Legislature. Gov. Josh Green should sign it, thereby offering a needed tool, and chance, to help even the most difficult cases among the houseless population.
Thousands of people in the state are cited or arrested each year for offenses such as drinking liquor in public, loitering in public parks after hours, and camping on sidewalks, beaches and other restricted public places, noted legislative conferees for SB 3139. “Most of these people suffer from issues relating to drugs, alcohol, or mental illness and may be better served through the health care system, rather than the criminal justice system.”
Indeed, SB 3139 comes at the problem from a place of health, help and healing — not law enforcement, incarceration or punishment.
The bill would establish a Crisis Intervention and Diversion Services Program within the state Department of Health so that persons with mental illnesses or co-occurring mental illness and substance use disorders can receive appropriate treatment. Law enforcement officers would be allowed to take someone showing signs of distress off the street involuntarily, to the Behavioral Health Crisis Center in Iwilei, which opened in March.
The idea is to have case managers and health-care staff work to stabilize the patient — then start a path toward treatment and longer-term housing.
The need for such healthy and humane intervention is underscored by the latest Point in Time Count of Oahu’s homeless: 33% (or 1,483 out of a total 4,494 count) reported a mental illness; some 26% reported a substance abuse disorder.
Currently, the police, prosecutors and court system are caught in a “never-ending revolving door situation” in which people cited do not appear in court, leading to bench warrants for arrests, notes SB 3139. Time and resources are expended bringing people to court.
SB 3139 stands to improve that situation. As rightly stated by the Department of Law Enforcement in support: Having “specially trained crisis intervention officers to determine if a person is imminently dangerous to themselves or others and have them transported to a designated behavior health crises center for further evaluation fills a very large gap in available response.”
One notable dissent, though, comes from ACLU Executive Director Salmah Rizvi, who wrote in a recent email to the Star-Advertiser: “While Senate Bill 3139 attempts to create community solutions, the bill inherently contravenes principles of human dignity and autonomy.
“Research has shown that police presence can exacerbate one’s mental health state and negatively impact our vulnerable neighbors, already suffering from houselessness, poverty, and trauma. Those in need of support are best served when offered consent, empathy, and a calm, safe environment for rehabilitation.”
But that’s precisely what SB 3139 aims to do: help get addled persons — who pose a risk to self or others — off the street, and into a calm, safe environment for rehabilitation. As for principles of human dignity, it’s hard to see how leaving a mentally ill or impaired person — again, who poses a risk to self or others — to languish on the streets without trying to help provides dignity.
In a recent article by Star-Advertiser reporter Dan
Nakaso, Sharmane Botelho, 54, who’s been living on the street in Iwilei, talked about making her second voluntary visit to the Behavioral Health Crisis Center after being
referred there by case managers.
“It’s a beautiful building, and I’ve come to love this place,” said Botelho, who now has a housing voucher. “It helped me. When you need help, why not reach out?”
No one is under any illusion that SB 3139 is a cure-all. But it does offer a pathway to services and support that currently does not exist. It offers an opportunity to get mentally ill homeless people the help they so desperately need — even if they themselves don’t yet know it.
