Title: Homeless Mentally Ill Facts and Figures : Mental Illness Policy Org
Headings: 250,000 mentally Ill are Homeless. 140,000 seriously mentally Ill are Homeless
250,000 mentally Ill are Homeless. 140,000 seriously mentally Ill are Homeless
SUMMARY:
Other studies:
Homelessness among mentally ill is increasing
Homelessness among mentally ill is associated with fewer psychiatric hospital beds
“Dumping” patients out of hospitals, saves mental health system money but increases overall cost to taxpayers by shifting care to more expensive jails and prisons.
Foreshadowing a grim future
Quality of life
Victimization
Sexual assault
Death
Frustration with inability to treat

Content: Many other homeless people hide from the eyes of most citizens. They shuffle quietly through the streets by day, talking to their voices only when they think nobody is looking, and they live in shelters or abandoned buildings at night. Some shelters become known as havens for these ill wanderers and take on the appearance of a hospital psychiatric ward. Others who are psychiatrically ill live in the woods on the outskirts of cities, under bridges, and even in the tunnels that carry subway trains beneath cities. Foreshadowing a grim future
There have been harbingers of an impending homeless crisis for individuals with untreated brain disorders since the early 1970s. Large numbers of ill people began forming psychiatric ghettos in cities such as Long Beach, New York, near Pilgrim State Hospital; San Jose, California, near Agnews State Hospital; and Tacoma, Washington, near Western State Hospital. As large, often run-down, boarding homes filled with discharged psychiatric patients from the nearby hospitals, the intended policy of deinstitutionalization increasingly looked rather like transinstitutionalization – the exchange of one impersonal institution for another. At the same time, the availability of single-room occupancy hotels and other low-rent housing was declining precipitously in urban areas as redevelopment and gentrification shifted into high gear.