County Shelter to Get Mentally Ill Off Streets

Mentally ill persons without homes who now wander the streets of downtown San Diego will have a place to turn for shelter and counseling under a new program approved Tuesday by the county Board of Supervisors.

The board unanimously approved what will become a $640,000 annual contract with Community Research Foundation, a private, nonprofit mental health agency that already runs several care centers around the county.

The downtown center will provide acute care for the severely mentally ill as well as transitional care for those who are stable but need help finding work, permanent shelter or social services.

“Some of these people now wind up not getting any treatment at all,” said Hobie Hawthorne, executive director of Community Research Foundation. “It’s a real unfortunate situation. A lot of it doesn’t need to be happening. We can make a difference for a number of these people.”

Hawthorne said the downtown center, to be on 10th Avenue south of Broadway, will have 14 “crisis residential” beds to which the mentally ill homeless can voluntarily commit themselves for as long as 30 days.

There, as many as 500 clients a year will be under the care of a consulting psychiatrist and psychologist, a nursing staff and several counselors on duty around the clock. Although there will be no locked rooms, the level of care will be similar to that found at the county’s acute care hospital in Hillcrest and private psychiatric hospitals around the county, Hawthorne said.

“The goal is to stabilize some of the clients and to connect them with services” they need, such as vocational training, rehabilitation, education or welfare, Hawthorne said.

Once they are able to care for themselves, the clients will be transferred to apartments with roommates, where they will live for as long as 90 days in a loosely supervised environment.

This stage of the program, which also will be open to clients who never enter the acute care center, is aimed at providing a transition between crisis care and independent living. There will be 40 beds available in the apartments.

Pat Stalnaker, a spokesman for the county’s mental health services division, said the program is “something we’ve been wanting to do for a long time downtown.”

“This will bring an almost hospital-like setting to the downtown area,” Stalnaker said. “This gives us residential beds where we can literally house people in an acute stage of mental illness. These people are not mobile; they’re very often confined as far as where they can go. Downtown--this is where the needs are for the homeless.”

The Community Research Foundation now operates 43 crisis residential beds and 40 long-term and transitional beds in seven programs in El Cajon, Vista, Logan Heights, South Bay, San Marcos, Oceanside and Golden Hill.