By H. R. Smith : missionlocal – excerpt
There are, unsurprisingly, so many more points than six
Supervisor Aaron Peskin gathered with supporters at Buena Vista Horace Mann K-8 school on Tuesday to announce his six-point Crisis to Care plan, saying if elected mayor he would address homelessness with housing, conservatorships, and cash payments to avoid evictions…
Peskin said he would be hands-on in the plan’s implementation.
“I will be the person that convenes the department heads,” says Peskin, in the tone of someone ascending to the emotional high point of a speech. “I will be the person who calls for and reads the audits and implements the results, and I will be the person who implements the systemic management reforms. I am the person who, from the legislative branch, has seen the tangled web and knows how to untangle it.”
It is this enthusiasm for the boringness of civic governance and budgeting (which even people who disagree with Peskin cite as a defining characteristic) that has raised the hopes of many of those assembled here that homelessness could be managed more like a public health problem than a referendum on an official’s political career. Though in this case, it could be both…
Proposition 1, which passed at the state level earlier this year after heavy campaigning from Gov. Gavin Newsom, requires every county in California to spend more of its tax revenue from the Mental Health Services Act on housing and treatment for people with drug and alcohol problems. It also requires money be set aside money for expanding residential facilities for people with mental health or substance abuse problems.
Some of the most practical sites for this kind of housing, says Agnos, are state mental hospitals that were defunded back when Ronald Reagan was governor of California. Local governments could literally work together and begin to un-Reagan decades of California mental health policy…(more)