San Diego County reaches historical rates in investment and Mental Health programs, according to Chair of the San Diego County Board of Supervisors, Nathan Fletcher, who detailed ways in which authorities now serve the homeless who need help, including those with chronic conditions.
“Throughout 2022 we are going to see more of this, because a problem that took decades to develop cannot be solved in a single year, in 2021,” Fletcher said. "This council has made historic investments in mental health, drug addiction treatment, and new services that come to help those who need it most.”
He continued:
"Our new crisis care units are open to offering homeless people in San Diego a better way out of the crisis, treatment facilities for homeless people with chronic conditions are becoming a reality.”
Fletcher especially noted that "our innovative mobile crisis response teams have been deployed throughout the county to reduce police responsibilities and provide on-scene care to those who need it most."
With the deployment of these teams, calls received at emergency centers reporting people with unusual behavior will be responded to by psychologists and their assistants; police officers only show up if the situation calls for it was as obviously necessary.
In the first assessment of a few days, emergency centers received 268 calls, and emergency crisis response teams responded to approximately 30 percent of those cases.
As a result, almost half of the calls answered by mental health teams ended up in links to community services. Some of these incidents could have escalated if the intensity increased due to the presence of police officers.
Fletcher said that even with all that progress, "we need to do more, and we need to do it fast, and we're going to do it."
