Persuasive Paper - Funding Housing to People with Mental Illness

Funding Housing to Individuals with Mental Illness

Walking down the streets of San Francisco can be a truly awakening experience; elaborate buildings, breathing lights and sashaying of high fashion moguls. However, these sites are only seen when looking up; take a glance down to find poverty and insanity at its finest pleading for a second chance. Homelessness is not only a common concern in San Francisco, California; but is estimated at 600,000 in the United States with 200,000 of this population enduring extreme mental illnesses. (Mental Illness Contributes to Homelessness, 2009) Although many of these struggling citizens across the nation would like to work, the survival routine of self-medicating drug and alcohol addictions and criminal records deter them from opportunities of hope. These citizens are only “earning or receiving in Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and other benefits an average annual income of 4,200 dollars” (Mental Illness Contributes to Homelessness, 2009) A monthly income of 350 dollars provides barely enough to eat and definitely not enough to sleep safely; nor does this provide the necessary amount to maintain cleanliness and sanity required for employment. San Francisco is one community who has made tremendous efforts to help mentally ill individuals have the opportunity to be a part of society and is successful in fighting to keep government funded guidance and support.

This vicious cycle of the mentally ill self-medicating and sleeping on the streets has become more prominent since the nation-wide mandated deinstitutionalization of the early 1960s. State mental hospitals, before the 1960s, acted as the primary source of housing and treatment for mentally ill individuals. When changes in technology and psychotropic medications occurred, State hospitals altered their criteria for admittance and left family, friends and communities with new responsibilities. However, the government had not developed transitional programs for the...