Target the Real Problem

The need has never been more urgent for Sacramento to help the people living in squalor on California’s streets. Senate President Pro Tem John Burton’s proposed Housing and Emergency Shelter Trust Fund Act of 2002 would do just that. But the $2.1-billion measure, which lawmakers are planning to put on the November ballot, attempts to do too much.

Example: Besides helping the people who live under bridges and on sidewalks, most of whom are battling mental illness and addictions, it will also provide “down payment assistance” to healthy home buyers shopping for, say, a $450,000 split-level ranch house.

State leaders need to prioritize, pare the bill down and close loopholes that would draw money away from those who need it most. To our thinking, that means moving the most conspicuous and shameful problem to the front of the line.

As it stands, Burton’s measure might be dubbed “The Developers’ Full Employment Act.” The people it would attempt to help include, among others, the disabled, “struggling families with no place to go” and farm workers. It would help teachers come up with a down payment and subsidize student housing at the state’s universities.

All these efforts are worthy. But a bond measure that tries to do too much will fail at everything. Government’s decades-long inability to move people off the streets will continue to demoralize Californians.

This state needs a success. To foster hope, Burton and his colleagues would do better to focus their measure on the genuine crisis. As it happens, this is the piece of the housing problem that can be readily solved. A remedy would have the most immediate impact on quality of life--not just for street dwellers but for everyone who skirts someone sleeping on a city or suburban sidewalk. Besides, fixing this mess makes the most economic sense, because chronic street dwellers cost the public dearly as they cycle through jails and hospitals.

Studies show that truly taking care of these people is a better way to manage taxpayer money. Counties are now cutting back hard in that area. While California law requires counties to be “health provider of last resort” to people suffering from life-threatening medical conditions such as bullet wounds or pneumonia, state legislators let them off the hook regarding mental health. A 1991 law said they are responsible only for providing such services “to the extent resources are available.” Now cash-strapped counties are backing away from the kinds of care and programs that have a proven record of moving indigents off the streets: housing that is linked to counseling, substance abuse classes and job training.

Everyone needs a decent place to live, and we know that there are real problems for teachers, students, migrant workers, the elderly and the disabled. But Burton’s measure has swollen in its ambitions to the point that it would be unlikely to have a significant impact on any problem, while the one problem that can and must be solved--mentally ill and addicted people living on sidewalks--grows more dispiriting by the day.