“It’s being sold to the voters as treatment. But you’ve got $2 billion going into housing that can be for people who are still using hard drugs. If you have a building with, let’s say, 40 units, and 15 of the people in them are addicted to hard drugs, that is going to have an impact on the community, and the community has no say in that land use at all. That’s in Prop One.”
Siyamak sits down with Susan Shelley, columnist at the Southern California News Group. Proposition One passed barely in California. Susan is going to tell us what the impacts are and whether it will cause tax increases in California.
“If someone wants to do hard drugs in free housing, they have every right to do so in California. We’re not differentiating between people who are making a choice to use drugs on the street and people who are domestic violence victims and are on the street. Everybody’s entitled to free housing equally.
To wait until people are arrested and are jailed, and that’s where they receive mental health services, is a terrible policy. The Los Angeles County jails are the largest mental health hospital system in the nation. That’s appalling. That’s not worthy of the state of California.” Susan Shelley said.
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