The History of Past Policies

California policy regarding the homeless has become one of the most detrimental aspects to the homeless crisis. Many of these policies have further worsened the homelessness crisis with decades of unsuccessful propositions. This has been seen by a reduction of mental health care services (Placzek, 2016), laws specifically made to incarcerate homeless (Wright, 2019), previous care money being funneled off to other places (Reppond, Bullock, 2018), and an unwillingness to change tactics as the current system is only deepening the issue (Wolf, 2021). 

• 1833 Worcester State Hospital opened in Massachusetts as the first mental hospital fully supported by state funds.

• 1860 Twenty-eight of the 33 existing U.S. states have state psychiatric hospitals.

• 1939-1945 During World War II conscientious objectors entered state psychiatric hospitals to replace doctors 

who were sent away for the war effort.

• 1946 Life Magazine publishes photos depicting the horrors inside the hospitals.

• 1954 Chlorpromazine, marketed as Thorazine, is approved by the Food and Drug Administration as the first 

anti-psychotic drug widely used to treat the symptoms of mental illness. 

• 1955 The number of patients inside public mental hospitals nationwide peaks at 560,000.

• 1959 The number of patients in California state mental hospitals peaks at 37,000.

• 1963 President John F. Kennedy signs the Community Mental Health Act.

• 1965 The U.S. Congress establishes Medicaid and Medicare. 

• 1967 At this point, the number of patients in state hospitals had fallen to 22,000, under the Reagan administration 

which leads to budget cuts to the Department of Mental Hygiene. 

• 1967 Reagan signs the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act and ends the practice of institutionalizing patients against 

their will, or for indefinite amounts of time. 

• 1969 Reagan reverses earlier budget cuts and increased spending on the Department of Mental Hygiene

by a record $28 million.

• 1973 The number of patients in California State mental hospitals falls to 7,000.

• 1980 President Jimmy Carter signs the Mental Health Systems Act to improve on Kennedy’s dream.

• 1981 President Reagan repealed Carter’s legislation with the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act. 

This pushes the responsibility of mentally ill patients back to the states. The legislation creates block grants for the 

states, but federal spending on mental illness declines.

• 2004 The U.S. Department of Justice estimates that 10 percent of state prisoners have symptoms that meet the 

criteria for a psychotic disorder.

• 2015 In the San Francisco Homeless Count, 55 percent of people experiencing chronic homelessness report they 

have emotional or psychiatric conditions.

(Andrea Polo Alcantara)

Kevin Fagan, an award-winning reporter of the San Francisco Chronicle, writes a summarized and informative report on the past and present factors that contribute to the homeless crisis in San Francisco. He specializes in reporting on homelessness due to his strong passion for the well-being of humans. In this report, Fagan’s intended audience is directed towards citizens of San Francisco rather than policy-makers due to his informal and subjective writing style. The long time reporter dates back to the ending of the Vietnam War and Reagan’s closure of social and housing programs in the 1980s being a strong factor to the increased number of mentally ill on the streets. Fagan paints a timeline of the past mayors of San Francisco’s attempt at solving the homeless crisis beginning with Dianne Feinstein’s shelter-bed-and-a-sandwich approach and ending with Gavin Newsome’s 10-year plan. He also addresses what should and shouldn’t be done to solve homelessness. This report on San Francisco’s homelessness shares similarities with Jessica Wolf's historical report on factors that have affected LA's homelessness crisis.

(Drew Barajas) 

 The National Academies Press, which publishes authoritative, independent research, published a study for doctors, nurses, and medical students who wish to help the homeless with their health. This research delves into the back story of homelessness, which was first used to describe people who traveled the country for work. Our current definition of homelessness did not emerge until the early 1980s, when the deinstitutionalization of mentally ill, high unemployment rate, unaffordable housing options and other major factors drove people to be homeless. This is also supported by the UCLA Newsroom report summary that these factors are what cause the homeless crisis in the first place. Another factor that increased this population is the HIV/AIDS epidemic, in which a study from Philadelphia showed that those who were homeless and had AIDS were male, substance abusers and diagnosed with a serious mental illness contracted AIDS due to risky behaviors, such as sharing needles (Culhane et al., 2001).

(Naomi Milan)

Jessica Wolf, the Director of Arts Communications and Marketing at UCLA, summarizes a report by the UCLA Luskin Center for History and Policy, which recommends policies that could tackle the homelessness crisis. This article is intended for students, as well as anyone who is interested in helping the homelessness crisis. The UCLA report details the deep history behind the causes of racial and economic inequality in LA, such as how the housing development could not keep up with the city's population growth during World War II, the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill, and the criminalization of people who live on the street. A reason for failed policies in the past is the lack of meaningful coordination between the city and counties. McKinsey & Company also pointed out that the crisis response system is fragmented and there are challenges in the service providers' coordination (Krivkovich, Modi, et. al, 2023). Some of the recommendations included are: to decriminalize homelessness, address rental and land use policies, and improve access to mental health and other social services. 

(Naomi Milan) 

Dr. Bullock is Professor of Psychology and Director of the BlumCenter at the University of California and Dr. Reppond is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan, Dearborn. In the article Framing Homeless Policy, they write toward the general public to educate on how predatory policies are taking money from the hands of the homeless and putting them into institutions instead. The whole idea behind the initiative was that it painted homeless people as villains that would only use money for bad and that only government or non profit organizations would be able to use it appropriately (Reppond, Bullock, 2018). This article and the article by Placzek, Did the Emptying of Psychiatric Hospitals Contribute to Homelessness, both highlight how detrimental the cutting of aid for the homeless can be. 

(Joshua Wagar)

R. George Wright is Professor of Law at the Cumberland School of Law at Samford University in Alabama who writes this volume for those in the field of law interested in learning more about the unethical policy making regarding the homeless. This section discusses the many laws and practices being put into place that take away the homeless populations' right to live freely (Wright, 2019). It highlights that not only is there no right to housing, but that not having housing seems to constitute enough reason to ignore a basic right to life that is being perpetuated by policymakers year after year. This writing is a good example of what not to do while the article by Wolf on The History of Homelessness in LA shows policies that could actually work. 

(Joshua Wagar)