Free booze to go with affordable housing where the Boulder Airport currently sits!
There are millions of $$$ to be made, once we get past spending umpteen millions on a lawsuit with the FAA . . . (And there still won’t be enough housing for middle-class workers).
— MRW
Nextdoor post by Steve Lynton:
No letup in Boulder’s drug overdose epidemic
Initial data this year point to a 33% increase, although it’s probably too early to draw inferences from the preliminary statistics. Last fall, Boulder’s former police chief, Maris Herold, warned the City Council that “we are really in an epidemic of overdoses in Boulder.” She termed the city’s “explosion” in overdoses from fentanyl and other drugs “very alarming,” and she cited data to back up her message. By the end of last year, the city’s police force had responded to 123 suspected overdoses, 18 of them fatal. So this month, I asked whether reported overdoses had continued at a similar pace. For the first three months of this year, city police recorded 28 overdoses, 4 of them fatal. That’s an increase by one-third over the same three-month period of 2023, during which police reported 21 overdoses, 3 of them fatal. Of course, these figures are unavoidably incomplete, since overdoses don’t always result in calls to police or incident reports. It’s also early in the year to draw inferences or make predictions, based on a small initial dataset. Nonetheless, Boulder’s statistical analysis is overseen by a PhD criminologist, Daniel Reinhard; and the data provide a solid analytical basis for policymakers and elected officeholders.
Unfortunately, the message from Herold and from others–including prosecutors, health professionals, social workers, and advocates for those caught up in the drug emergency–isn’t sinking in. Clearly, the city’s overdose epidemic isn’t likely to disappear anytime soon. Clearly, Boulder’s first-responders have few tools other than Narcan to address the surge in overdoses. Clearly, drug trafficking and use are key issues in the spread of illegal encampments in city parks and public spaces and in criminal activity associated with those encampments. A survey during Boulder’s point-in-time count in July showed that over half of those living without shelter–64 out of 110 respondents–reported substance addiction. Clearly, Boulder’s criminal justice system has no simple means to address this epidemic. The county jail is at capacity; Boulder lacks a treatment center, such as the new one in Larimer County just north of here, to which addicted misdemeanor offenders might be sentenced as a jail alternative. Boulder’s county commissioners were urged by some elected officials and others last year to target a sales tax extension toward establishing a facility like Larimer’s. They balked; and although there’s been behind-the-scenes talk, no new strategy has emerged. Clearly, the drug epidemic isn’t at the top of the City Council’s agenda.
Former chief Herold’s observation last September seems to ring true today: “You are seeing a system that has high drug addiction –high mental health issues. And there is no help for us right now.”
— MRW
Good discussion and sorry for the many edits. IMO: Low-skilled jobs should not command high wages. Small businesses shouldn’t be clipped. Successful homeowners shouldn’t be demonized or punished. Incommuting is a problem. What is lacking is appropriate housing program administration. Prioritization should be given to people who work in the community. They should be allowed on existing housing lists and into existing units. Most of the people in BHP (Boulder Housing Partners) units are not low-wage workers but vagrants from the BSH (Boulder Shelter for the Homeless) pipeline programs who never work and if they are bad tenants, impossible to move out. (Emphasis is mine — MRW) The affordable units are here but they are not administrated to meet the needs of working people who will never make enough to afford Boulder. So, the answer is always BUILD MORE, TAX MORE, and JAM too many people into existing housing. It’s a scam and punishment for people who succeed in life. I was a registered nurse, a low-wage not middle-income worker according to the HUD income scales I posted above. I never made over 35,000.00 a year! I could have benefited from an affordable unit but never qualified for one until I was 55 yrs, a so-called senior, and then if I worked full time, I wouldn’t qualify! If what I suggested had been a priority, I could have contributed much much more to the community. I was a certified teacher and nurse and lived most of my life with housing instability. Frankly, having roommates as an adult sucks! I know the programs very well and I consider them to be a waste and a scam except for true seniors and disabled people and seniors should start at 65 plus imo. I’m 70 now and no longer work. I’m in a BHP unit and I can tell you the h*om*l*ss industrial complex is a scam and boy do they know it!
— MRW
Treatment for substance abuse and/or mental disorders absolutely must be mandatory; to pretend otherwise is why Housing First has such a piss-poor track record. GED classes, vocational training, and life skills in general are also needed to end the recycling of homeless clients through worthless programs that cost umpteen millions of dollars but show few positive benefits.
Seems to me that we have to find a name that aligns with what goals need to be, and housing is just one of many! Housing alone will never bring about positive change in the lives of the homeless in need, even though it serves to help rake in the Big Bucks from both public and private sources.
— MRW
— MRW
It has always troubled me that homeless women are forced to share the same space as perverts — some of whom are violent serial rapists . . . And there seems to be no regard for the safety of the neighborhood, either. Does it make sense to open up this facility 24/7? Better, I believe, to reject anyone with a record of sexual crimes(s).
Contact BSH staff and tell them your concerns! (303) 442-4646.
— MRW
Addendum: I’m told there was a fatal OD at Boulder Shelter last night, but it’s almost certain we’ll NEVER have full disclosure from those in charge at that facility.
Article from the Wall Street Journal of 2/4/2013, copied below in its entirety:
By E. Fuller Torrey
On Feb. 5, 1963, 50 years ago this week, President John F. Kennedy addressed Congress on “Mental Illness and Mental Retardation.” He proposed a new program under which the federal government would fund community mental-health centers, or CMHCs, to take the place of state mental hospitals. As Kennedy envisioned it, “reliance on the cold mercy of custodial isolations will be supplanted by the open warmth of community concern and capability.”
President Kennedy’s proposal was historic because the public care of mentally ill individuals had been exclusively a state responsibility for more than a century. The federal initiative encouraged the closing of state hospitals and aborted the development of state-funded outpatient clinics in process at that time.
Over the following 17 years, the feds funded 789 CMHCs with a total of $2.7 billion ($20.3 billion in today’s dollars). During those same years, the number of patients in state mental hospitals fell by three quarters—to 132,164 from 504,604—and those beds were closed down.
From the beginning, it was clear that CMHCs were not interested in taking care of the patients being discharged from the state hospitals. Instead, they focused on individuals with less severe problems sometimes called “the worried well.” Federal studies reported individuals discharged from state hospitals initially made up between 4% and 7% of the CMHCs patient load, and the longer the CMHC was in existence the lower this percentage became.
It has now become politically correct to claim that this federal program failed because not enough centers were funded and not enough money was spent. In fact, it failed because it did not provide care for the sickest patients released from the state hospitals. When President Ronald Reagan finally block-granted federal CMHC funds to the states in 1981, he was not killing the program. He was disposing of the corpse.
Meantime, during the years CMHCs were funded, Medicaid and Medicare were created and modifications were made to the Supplemental Security Income and Social Security Disability Insurance programs. None of these programs was originally intended to become a major federal support for the mentally ill, but all now fill that role. The federal takeover of the mental-illness treatment system was complete.
Fifty years later, we can see the results of “the open warmth of community concern and capability.” Approximately half of the mentally ill individuals discharged from state mental hospitals, many of whom had family support, sought outpatient treatment and have done well. The other half, many of whom lack family support and suffer from the most severe illnesses such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, have done poorly.
According to multiple studies summarized by the Treatment Advocacy Center, these untreated mentally ill are responsible for 10% of all homicides (and a higher percentage of the mass killings), constitute 20% of jail and prison inmates and at least 30% of the homeless. Severely mentally ill individuals now inundate hospital emergency rooms and have colonized libraries, parks, train stations and other public spaces. The quality of the lives of these individuals mocks the lofty intentions of the founders of the CMHC program.
Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of this 50-year federal experiment is its inordinate cost. In 2009, 4.7 million Americans received SSI or SSDI because of mental illnesses, not including mental retardation, a tenfold increase since 1977. The total cost was $46 billion. The total Medicaid and Medicare costs for mentally ill individuals in 2005 was more than $60 billion.
Altogether, the annual total public funds for the support and treatment of mentally ill individuals is now more than $140 billion. The equivalent expenditure in 1963 when Kennedy proposed the CMHC program was $1 billion, or about $10 billion in today’s dollars. Even allowing for the increase in U.S. population, what we are getting for this 14-fold increase in spending is a disgrace.
Including President Kennedy, five Democratic and five Republican presidents have presided over the 50-year federal experiment. Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush appointed presidential commissions to examine the failed programs, but nothing useful came from either.
Nor is President Obama likely to do anything, since his lead agency, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, has essentially denied that a problem exists. Its contribution to the president’s response to the Dec. 14 Newtown tragedy focused only on school children and insurance coverage. And its current plan of action for 2011-14, a 41,000-word document, includes no mention of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or outpatient commitment, all essential elements in an effective plan for corrective action.
The evidence is overwhelming that this federal experiment has failed, as seen most recently in the mass shootings by mentally ill individuals in Newtown, Conn., Aurora, Colo., and Tucson, Ariz. It is time for the federal government to get out of this business and return the responsibility, and funds, to the states.
The federal government, perhaps through the Institute of Medicine, would be responsible only for evaluating and rating state programs, much as it now does for education. The ultimate responsibility would rest with state legislatures and governors. Then, for the first time in 50 years, somebody could be held accountable for what has become an ongoing disaster.
Dr. Torrey is founder of the Treatment Advocacy Center and author of “American Psychosis: How the Federal Government Destroyed the Mental Illness Treatment System,” forthcoming from Oxford University Press.
— MRW
— MRW
Involved in a violent attack against a woman near Eben G. Fine Park, and confronted by neighbors coming to her aid . . . Reportedly carried a hatchet. (If he threatened a police officer with it, he’d be shot dead and then we’d be reading about another lawsuit against the City of Boulder.)
— MRW
Anything is possible, but I admit I’m already looking past this case to imagine what weird pseudo-legal construct the Far Left will advance next . . .
Addendum 4/23/2024: https://twitter.com/bouldergeezer/status/1782800567745597851
— MRW
homelessphilosopher 