Streets

People living on city streets has grown into a problem. They are euphemistically referred to as homeless as that seems to resolve them of any wrong doing but in fact the majority of these people are either mentally ill and/or addicts. They do not want to live in shelters or go to rehab because in both places no drugs are allowed. They live next to their source of drugs and that is what they want. When individual family members make it easy for addicts they are called enablers so the states have now become enablers but they are never referred to in that way. In the 1960's states led by good-hearted governors like Reagan in California, started to remove patients from mental health facilities. Three forces drove the movement, the belief that mental hospitals were cruel and inhumane, the hope that new drugs offered a cure and the desire to save money. Some cities are more lenient in their dealings with addicts and so these people tend to congregate in those cities. Cities like Minneapolis and Chicago are less likely to have this problem because winters make it difficult to live on the street. California is the poster state for this problem. They have made a number of attempts to alleviate the problem but things have only gotten worse. It is not for lack of money since their budget went from a $100 billion dollar surplus to a $32 billion dollar deficit in one year.