SF officials hope for judges’ help in getting troubled homeless off streets

California State Senator Scott Wiener speaks during a press conference at the offices of Stitch Fix in San Francisco, Calif., on Monday Jan. 29, 2018. Senator Wiener is introducing a bill to require lactation facilities in California businesses. less California State Senator Scott Wiener speaks during a press conference at the offices of Stitch Fix in San Francisco, Calif., on Monday Jan. 29, 2018. Senator Wiener is introducing a bill to require lactation ... more Photo: Michael Macor / The Chronicle Buy photo Photo: Michael Macor / The Chronicle Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close SF officials hope for judges’ help in getting troubled homeless off streets 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

San Francisco’s new lockdown mental health facility at St. Mary’s Medical Center was opened to a mix of public praise for the idea and private prayers that Sacramento lawmakers will change conservatorship laws to make it easier to commit homeless people with psychiatric problems to long-term treatment.

Barbara Garcia, director of the city Department of Public Health, said what’s needed for the $5 million-a-year San Francisco Healing Center to be effective is for judges to be given more latitude to commit people with a long history of mental health issues and nuisance-law violations. At present, judges make such decisions only on the basis of how homeless people appear after a three-day hold, when they are often sobered up and no longer a danger to themselves.

“We’re talking about the city’s 40 to 50 most chronic cases ,” said Mayor Mark Farrell as he toured the floor. “We call them frequent fliers — those who are repeatedly going through our hospital system and our emergency rooms, using our ambulances, using our Fire Department and Police Department.”

Frustration over the revolving door at the mental ward like the one at St. Mary’s and San Francisco General prompted state Sen. Scott Wiener to introduce SB1045. “The bill will allow judges to take into account how many times the person had a 72-hour psychiatric hold in the past year or that they had been taken to the emergency ward 30 times,” Wiener said.

Still, Wiener knows he’s up against 50 years of liberal policies toward the mentally ill and concerns about depriving them of their civil rights.

“We overly depend on locking people up already,” said Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness. “We should be building up our community mental health system so that people don’t get to that point of needing to be locked up.”

“We need both,” said Farrell, who added, “We need to have a bottom line of decency and decorum on our streets, and this is part of that solution.”

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