Congresswoman Judy Chu listens to Homeless advocate Dorothy Edwards
(3-14-16)

“Meet Dorothy Edwards. Just a few years ago, she lived with her dog, Gunner, under a freeway overpass in Greater Los Angeles. She was heavily addicted to drugs and couldn’t find a way to get off the streets. “I craved a place of my own,” she said. “I watched people who, day after day, helped me out and handed me money. I thought, I know they’re leaving and they’re going home. I was hurting and needed a home too.”

This is how the story that I’ve posted below begins: Dorothy Edwards — homeless and addicted.

But that is not how I know Dorothy. I know her as a delightful and caring fellow member of the Board of Directors of the Corporation for Supportive Housing, a national non-profit organization that in the past three years has overseen the disbursement of $183 million in loans to build supporting housing.

That’s right. A former homeless woman with addiction issues is now helping oversee the successful building of 18,379 supportive housing units across our country and the delivery of services to more than 58,000 individuals.

Dorothy is not only an inspiring colleague, she illustrates the potential of individuals if they are given the help that they need to move forward with their lives. She is one of my heroes and one of the reasons why I’m proud to serve on the CSH board.

Over the years, I have become convinced that housing, especially Housing First, is crucial for helping persons with serious and persistent mental illnesses and substance abuse problems recover. How can anyone get better if they have a serious mental illness and co-occurring addictions and are homeless?

This is why I am grateful that USA Today recently spotlighted Dorothy’s journey in its ongoing series about the need for mental health reform in America and Bill Pitkin wrote about her in the Washington Monthly. (below.) Each time she tells her story, she is putting a human face on the need for community services, compassion, recovery and hope. And she always does it with a smile.

The next time you see someone who is homeless crouched under an underpass with a mental illness and/or substance problem remember my friend Dorothy and think about how that individual might be able to enrich all of our lives if they had a safe place to live. 
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Why haven’t two state agencies investigating the death of Jamycheal Mitchell, a 24 year-old Virginia man diagnosed with bipolar disorder who was found dead in his jail cell August 19, 2015, released the results of their investigations?

Mitchell was arrested on April 22, 2015 for trespassing and stealing a Mountain Dew soft drink, a Snickers Bar, and a Zebra Cake from a 7-Eleven on George Washington Highway in Portsmouth. A judge ruled that he was incompetent to stand trial and ordered him to be transferred to Eastern State Hospital in Williamsburg to be made competent for trial. Instead, he died in the Hampton Roads Regional Jail 90 days after that order was sent. Inmates who saw him there told reporters that he spent his last days alone in the cell with feces smeared on the walls and urine on the floor.

Nine days after his body was discovered, jail officials issued a statement saying that they had found no evidence of wrongdoing by their correction officials. In December, the state medical examiner’s office released an autopsy report that concluded Mitchell died of “probable cardiac arrhythmia accompanying wasting syndrome of unknown etiology. ” Wasting syndrome is defined as a profound loss of weight, greater than 10 percent of a person’s original body weight.

Let’s review those statements. A healthy but psychotic young man is arrested for stealing $5 worth of food and jailed. During the four months that he is in custody he loses so much weight that his heart gives out. But no on in the jail who was responsible for watching him did anything wrong. Once again in Virginia, the public is told that if anyone is at fault, it is the mentally ill prisoner himself.

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(3-10-16) If you want to participate in a serious discussion about what you can do to help reform our broken mental health care system then pick up your phone tonight at 7 p.m. and join mental health advocate D.J. Jaffe of mentalillnesspolicy.org. and me for my first teleconference.

All you need to do is dial (712) 775-7031 and use Access Code 715149 @ 7PM EST.

There is no need to RSVP. And no topic is off limits.

D.J. hosts teleconferences to encourage advocacy and I am delighted that he has he invited me to be one of his guests. Take a break from watching March Madness, the Republican debates and American Idol and join us for what surely will be a lively discussion about my family’s story, what’s happening in Congress, what I’ve learned traveling to every state except Mississippi and Hawaii talking about mental illness, jails and prisons, housing, and how my views have changed since I wrote CRAZY: A Father’s Search Through America’s Mental Health Madness more than nine years ago!

Talk to you tonight!

(3-9-16) If you think the federal government should do something to fix our mental health care system but you really can’t agree or don’t know what needs to be done then you should be pleased with the much anticipated draft version of The Mental Health Reform Act of 2016 that a bipartisan group of U.S. Senators released yesterday. (Click HERE for text of the staff discussion draft.)

It pretty much ignores the changes that Rep. Tim Murphy (R.-Pa.) is proposing in his Helping Families In Mental Health Crisis Act and also snubs much of what the House Democrats offered in the Comprehensive Behavioral Health Reform and Recovery Act of 2016  .

“The bipartisan draft legislation works to bring our mental health care system into the 21^st Century by embracing mental health research and innovation, giving states the flexibility they need to meet the needs of those suffering, and improving access to care,” Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), the leader of the Senate Health Committee (HELP), along with Democrat Sen. Patty Murray (Wash.) and Sens. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and Bill Cassidy (R. La.)  declared in a joint press release.

Really? That’s tall praise for a bill that contains mostly sizzle and no steak.

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Alexander, Murray, Cassidy, Murphy Introduce Plan to Address Mental Health Crisis in America

Senate health committee members release staff discussion draft to help Americans suffering from mental health and substance abuse disorders by ensuring mental health agency embraces innovation, gives states flexibility to meet need, and improves access to care

WASHINGTON, D.C., March 7 – A bipartisan group of Senate health committee members, including the Chairman and Ranking Member, today announced their plan to address the country’s mental health crisis and ensure Americans suffering from mental illness and substance abuse disorders receive the care they need.

The bipartisan draft legislation works to bring our mental health care system into the 21^st Century by embracing mental health research and innovation, giving states the flexibility they need to meet the needs of those suffering, and improving access to care.

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(Shortly after publishing CRAZY: A Father’s Journey Through America’s Mental Health Madness, I spent several weeks with Gunther Stern at Georgetown Ministries in Washington D.C. because I wanted to write a book about homelessness. But my editor at the time rebuffed it, explaining that no one wanted to read about persons with mental illnesses who lived on the streets. I was thrilled yesterday when Theresa Vargas at the Washington Post published a profile of Gunther and his tirelessly efforts to help the “invisible” who roam our streets.”)

In Georgetown, the homeless can be hidden amid the million-dollar homes

By Theresa Vargas, The Washington Post, 3-7-16

In a Georgetown elevator alcove, a heavyset woman in all black sits on two plastic crates, insisting to Gunther Stern that she is fine. She is not homeless, she says. She has a big house. But Stern knows differently. He knows that she will wear the same sweatshirt tomorrow, and the day after that. He knows that crammed into three nearby garbage bags, one topped with a tiny pink-haired doll, is everything she owns.

He knows that if he doesn’t check on her, no one might.

The woman, who gives her name as Janice one day and Darleen the next, has been homeless for decades, making her one of the neediest in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the nation’s capital. She’s a regular on Stern’s rounds.

For 25 years, Stern has run the Georgetown Ministry Center, which was created after a homeless man froze to death on the street more than three decades ago. But because many homeless cannot or choose not to come into the day center located behind a church, Stern often goes to them, stepping into the nooks that tourists will never see and forging relationships with their hidden occupants, some whose hardships are obvious and others who blend so seamlessly that they might disappear unnoticed if it weren’t for him.

In a city with about 7,000 people who have no place to live, D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) has vowed to end chronic homelessness by 2017. But a walk with Stern reveals the complicated reality of that ambitious goal.

Aaron Bivens panhandles during rush hour on M St. in Georgetown. Bivens says he has been on and off the streets with medical issues and has received aid from the Georgetown Ministry Center. (Amanda Voisard/For the Washington Post)

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