Metropolitan State Hospital occupies 162 acres in Norwalk. That’s the same size as Disneyland. Many Metropolitan buildings have been uninhabited for decades. Coyotes roam freely across the expansive grounds, past Tudor-style office buildings.
It is one of several California state mental hospitals that used to be part of a larger network to treat patients with mental illness. Currently, more than 90% of the 7,000 patients treated at the five locations at any given time (about 700 in the Metropolitan) are involved in the criminal justice system. Some are mentally incompetent to stand trial and will receive enough treatment to return to court to face charges. Others have been found not guilty by reason of insanity or have some other connection to the justice system.
Most others who would have been treated in state mental hospitals before the decade of “deinstitutionalization” from the 1960s now live with their families, in private care facilities, in jails or on the streets.
Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn and state Sen. Bob Archuleta (D-Pico Rivera) want to use the Metropolitan portion for supportive housing for people who are currently homeless and in need of psychiatric or substance abuse treatment. His efforts are commendable. That kind of home and care is really needed.
Last week, the Legislature passed Archuleta Senate Bill 1336, which would allow the state to negotiate with the county to lease some buildings for interim supportive housing. We hope the governor signs it into law.
But it’s frustrating that state and county officials are still thinking so hard about how to make unused and empty public facilities work better.
For example, LA County supervisors threw up their hands on the dilapidated Men’s Central Jail near downtown because it supposedly lacked an alternative location to house and treat people accused of crimes. But the arrangement being discussed to use Metropolitan would exclude patients who have any involvement in the criminal justice system – even though it has been used for part of the hospital’s operations.
This kind of thinking makes us wonder: Are state and county officials serious about treating mental illness and housing the homeless or not?
The new plan for the massive Norwalk campus is the cheapest. A lot of vacant acres of the state have an obvious historical link to mental health care, at a time when the county somehow could not figure out where to house or treat people, and Gov. Gavin Newsom scolding them for not enough.
It is surprising that the state and county did not develop this land for mental-health-oriented housing long ago – and the state can even use much of the property for the Highway Patrol office.
There are some troubling parallels between this land and the Veterans Affairs campus in West Los Angeles, where officials have leased space for commercial purposes for decades. It took a lawsuit to force federal officials to house veterans on the property.
The problem for county supervisors is that neighborhoods generally don’t want mentally ill people living nearby, and certainly not people accused of crimes — even on properties that historically housed such people and were in good shape before the community was built. those people.
For example, during the pandemic, the county temporarily closed Camp Scott, a probation camp in Santa Clarita. The city is suing to block the county from reopening it to house violent juvenile offenders. A settlement reached this year will likely prevent the district from ever again housing anyone in the existing justice system, violent or otherwise.
Meanwhile, supervisors are appealing to neighbors to accept supportive housing for formerly homeless people in several locations in the district. They rarely succeed. He can come forward, but he doesn’t want to be sued, and most importantly, he doesn’t want to lose the election.
That is why they are attracted to solutions that they call experience and proof that they will fail. For example, the idea recently resurrected for a large custodial psychiatric treatment facility for people accused of crimes, built in the former Men Central Jail in the county sheriff’s jail complex near downtown, will do little to lift patients from the cycle of disease, detention. , imprisoned, released and re-arrested. Law enforcement’s approach to the mentally ill undermines recovery.
But the only neighbors in Men’s Central are the bail bond company and the jail, which unlike the landlords has no problem with another jail moving in next door. So the bad alternative becomes politically attractive.
Supervisors continue to pick the low-hanging fruit for housing and treating the mentally ill, and that’s okay. Building on land that has been seized by the county or state, away from neighbors who may object, is a good place to start. Examples include Hilda L. Solis Care First Village, where the district has planned to build a new jail but at the insistence of Supervisor Solis’ instead of building an interim housing complex and care in coordination with the Weingart Foundation. And similar projects are led by Solis at the former County General hospital, Supervisor Kathryn Barger at Olive View-UCLA Medical Center in Sylmar and Supervisor Holly Mitchell at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center.
Or a possible job at the state hospital in Norwalk.
But supervisors must also reach higher. They have to build many small facilities on private and public parcels, and stand in cities and communities that prefer to lock the most troublesome citizens in remote locations. Supervisors should defend against lawsuits and not worry too much about elections.
They should remember – and also to the constituents – that saying no to care facilities in the “backyard” will mean more and more having to deal with homeless people, addicts, mentally ill and sometimes law-breaking neighbors in the front. A more pressing issue won’t win the election.
