More Mentally Ill Homeless on the Streets, U.S. Mayors Report

The nation’s big-city mayors reported Friday that the number of homeless people with severe mental illnesses is growing, and they called on the federal and state governments to pledge not to release patients from mental hospitals into the streets.

“Homeless shelters and city streets have become the de facto mental institutions of the 1980s and 1990s,” said Boston Mayor Raymond L. Flynn, president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

Mayor James Scheibel of St. Paul, Minn., said a September-October survey of officials in 22 cities concluded that about 206,000 people in those cities were homeless.

Of these, 69,000 were severely mentally ill, “and nearly half of those who were homeless and severely mentally ill were also addicted to drugs and alcohol.”

Since Jan. 1, 1990, Scheibel said, “we have seen a 7% increase in the number of homeless mentally ill persons and a 9% increase in the number of homeless people who are both severely mentally ill and addicted to drugs and alcohol.”

Flynn said the problem had been caused by the “failed policy of deinstitutionalization,” which closed many large mental hospitals, and by cutbacks in federal housing programs, which “unleashed a tidal wave of homelessness onto our streets.”

He said that when people leave mental hospitals they often need community mental health services to enable them to live outside the hospital. But he said that such services are often sparse and are being cut nationwide.