By Bob Walsh
Regular readers will remember that BGB has written a couple of times about the SF street person who was hosed down by a local business owner, and the fact that the owner was then prosecuted for battery. It will come as no surprise to anybody to hear that the homeless woman was well known to the local authorities.
She is known as Q to the local
mental health and community service people. She has been approached
numerous times to attempt to get her into a shelter or a program of some
sort. Q repeatedly asserts that she is just fine, there is nothing
wrong with her and she does not require assistance. The Street Crisis
Response Teams cost SF a tad over twelve million dollars per year, with
indifferent results.
Several
days after the hosing incident Q was in fact hospitalized. It has not
been announced if that hospitalization was voluntary.
Under
CA law you can not force a person into mental health treatment unless
they are a danger to themselves or others. There are only two social
workers in SF who are authorized to process the 5150 holds. They are
apparently often of the opinion that the Street Crisis Response Teams
are insufficiently aggressive in forcing people into treatment. Shelter
beds and services are not always immediately available to people who
have a less than emergency situation.
The city of SF is reorganizing the teams and putting more resources forward. It may help. Or not.
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