Take Homeless off S.F. Streets - Fully Fund Mental Health
Mayor Gavin Newsom's budget proposed draconian cuts in services to persons with mental illness. These cuts are draconian because they follow years of under-funding. The cuts expand and reinforce the county jail's role as San Francisco's largest mental health facility.
Yet we cannot clean up our city, curb street crime, reduce drug use and fight violent crime unless we treat and care for these mentally ill. There's a full court press on the Board of Supervisors to try to reverse the worst of these cuts.
The $18 million subtracted from a $1 billion public health budget means some 18,000 mentally ill persons will lose services, vital to all and life-threatening for most.
Mental illness - like cancer - is physically based. Those afflicted can be disabled in person and brain, unable to live safely day to day. They require housing, but also day treatment, case management, substance-abuse assistance and vocational rehabilitation services.
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