Once a thriving engineer in San Jose’s aerospace industry, once
a family man in Hollister,
”
Bob
”
now resides alone
– homeless – in a camper. He works one day a week at a
”
no-brainer
”
job.
Ten years ago, Bob lost everything.
Three family members
– both of his parents and an in-law – died within 18 months.
Depression crippled his mind. His once-electric intellect suddenly
unwired. Bob plummeted.
Third in a series of stories on hunger and homelessness in San Benito County.
Once a thriving engineer in San Jose’s aerospace industry, once a family man in Hollister, “Bob” now resides alone – homeless – in a camper. He works one day a week at a “no-brainer” job.
Ten years ago, Bob lost everything.
Three family members – both of his parents and an in-law – died within 18 months. Depression crippled his mind. His once-electric intellect suddenly unwired. Bob plummeted.
Then 43, he lost his job, and with it the family home. Bob couldn’t hold steady employment.
While his wife sustained her “lucrative” Silicon Valley job, the family could still afford rent in Hollister.
But Bob sunk further and further. He had symptoms of bipolar disorder, a monstrous and chronic malady causing euphoric highs and crushing lows.
“I got to the point where I couldn’t even get out of bed for a month at a time,” he said.
His presence was killing the family psyche. At his worst, with his daughter only 5, Bob’s wife requested he move out of the house.
He peacefully departed. And for 1 1/2 years he slept in his pick-up.
“It got so cold living in the truck,” he said, his slow-paced speech saturated with sadness. “A very, very dear man in the community allowed me to stay on a piece of his land.”
During those 18 months Bob saved money and bought a used camper for $400. He hasn’t left Hollister since and still calls the camper “home.”
For awhile he worked at his low-demand job five days a week before he was cut to one day.
Some days are long, painfully cramped, alone.
“I wind up staying in bed 16 hours a day,” he said.
Bob represents the often-overlooked tragedy of mental illness and homelessness in San Benito County.
“Yeah. I’m it,” he said, referring to his symbolic pitfall.
Still, his warm-but-scant camper would be a splurge of luxury to hundreds who helplessly roam Hollister’s Park Hill, the banks of the San Benito River and other areas tattooed with the signs of poverty.
San Benito County’s population of mentally ill is just one poverty-related predicament among many. A prominent statewide study released in October found that the county suffers a comparatively high incidence of hunger. And while homelessness pervades the county more than most people had realized, the city doesn’t maintain a single homeless shelter.
A California problem
According to local officials, the correlation between homelessness and mental illness continues to grow statewide. Mental illnesses that commonly affect the homeless include depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.
“It’s one of the best-kept secrets in the state,” said Lt. Patrick Turturici of the San Benito County Sheriff’s Department, citing a lack of funding as the problem’s cause.
More than 50,000 people in California are mentally ill homeless, according to California Housing Advocates. Nationally, 20 to 25 percent of the single adult homeless population suffers from a mental illness, according to the National Coalition for Homelessness.
San Benito County Sheriff Curtis Hill said adequate treatment plunged in the 1970s when the California Legislature disbanded a large number of state of facilities. Hill said reform is necessary statewide before improvements can occur locally. He serves on the state’s Board of Corrections, which has persistently striven to add programs for the mentally ill homeless.
Hill mentioned grants supporting use of “tracking mechanisms” for the mentally ill homeless, which the state awarded to 13 counties. Such devices are useful, he said, because most patients stop taking medication upon leaving the jail and turn to destructive drug and alcohol habits.
The BOC fought, and failed, to expand the program to all of California’s 58 counties.
“It’s just not possible because there’s no money (because of budget shortfalls)…” Hill said. “The only option would be local governing bodies. And that’s just not happening. They can’t afford it.”
In October, Gov. Gray Davis announced $55 million to fund 34 programs statewide for the mentally ill homeless. However, San Benito County will not be among the recipients.
In September, Davis signed into law AB 1421, which will provide 72-hour involuntary outpatient care for mentally ill homeless. To get it passed, however, legislators offered optional participation for counties.
A San Benito disaster
San Benito County simply can’t support AB 1421, which takes effect Jan. 1, because the county doesn’t currently maintain a single 24-hour facility for the mentally ill and won’t fund the optional effort, said Alan Yamamoto, director of the county’s Mental Health Services.
Primarily, two county agencies serve needs of the mentally ill homeless – the county jail and Mental Health Services. They struggle cooperatively to meet the needs of local populations. If someone demands inpatient care for a mental illness, the county transports that person to either Natividad Medical Center in Salinas or Dominican Hospital in Santa Cruz.
Such transportation gets expensive, Turturici said. The jail has an annual medical budget of $150,000, which includes psychological treatment and medication. Sending a patient to either hospital costs a minimum $3,000, not including transportation expenses.
Turturici started working for county law enforcement 17 years ago. A rapid surge in mentally ill patients began at the county jail six or seven years ago and hasn’t slowed since, he said. And the “epidemic” is statewide.
“The average person wouldn’t believe the number of mentally ill in county jails,” Turturici said.
Estimates of the proportion of local jail inmates with mental illness vary widely among county officials.
At the lower end, Turturici said 10 to 14 percent of inmates are mentally ill. Hill said it’s somewhere between 20 and 40 percent. Yamamoto wouldn’t give an estimate, saying a well-grounded determination would take one or two weeks.
Turturici and Hill agree the jail shouldn’t be forced to act as the county’s largest provider of mental health assistance. But there’s no choice, Hill said.
Law enforcement officers, trained for crime prevention, regularly perform work intended for medical professionals because the county lacks necessary services, they said. Routinely, the police and sheriff’s departments arrest the mentally ill homeless for crimes such as petty theft or public intoxication.
“We wait for them to get arrested,” Turturici said.
Tara Larkin is a nurse at County Mental Health who visits the jail each Monday to administer medication. On weekends, the jail staff handles the duty. Larkin also goes during “crisis” situations, which include serious risk of suicide.
“A guy tried to hang himself just last week,” she said. The inmate made the attempt with his cell’s bed sheets.
Undoubtedly, a flux of homeless people are mentally ill. Jail workers will attest to that. They’ve come to know many of the names, their faces, their sorrows.
Hill said most mentally ill who are homeless or jailed remain so for a single reason – their mental illness.
They’re constantly in and out of the facility. And with that, they’re in and out of treatment, which often drains Hill and Turturici of any hope for optimism. Both remain disturbed and skeptical of the overall situation. And both said the problem will only get worse.
In general, patients show dramatic signs of improvement while in jail, Turturici said. Then their sentences end – and so does the involuntary taking of medication.
“They never follow with treatment until they come back into custody,” Turturici said. “We’re warehousing these people, then releasing them back on the streets.”
And so the cycle continues.
“I’ve come to be sympathetic with these people,” Turturici said. “They need help, but there’s no real help out there.”
Law enforcement officials such as Hill and Turturici, along with Yamamoto, said more funding and a local homeless shelter would solve two problems: They would prevent inhumane conditions and – more importantly, Turturici said – a shelter would provide more consistent psychological treatment.
“I think that our community has decided we’re not interested in public funding to that end,” Hill said.
Like the pills that shield the suffering minds, the local fix for mental illness remains. Temporary.
