The Reality of Mental Health Complications: Social and Personal

This week, Theo explores the reality of mental health complications while unhoused -- with parent to an unhoused Angeleno, Anita, and speaking about lived experience with attorney Clare Cortwright. Also, we remember Angeleno and Reclaimer activist Benito Flores.

More about Reclaimers and contribute to Benito's memorial fund here: 

https://reclaimingourhomes.org/support/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Previously on Whedian House.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
Folks are free to contact my office like to directly
for my website. They can also call in and call
our office as well and my district representatives, you know,
but Carloss here, you know, they do an excellent job
of just staying in touch with the community. You know,
people reach out to me through all sorts of methods,
whether it be online or social media or going through

(00:27):
the traditional route of the email, you know, phone calls,
and we respond all sorts of ways. So it's it's
it's very important to me, especially as as a Latino woman,
as you know, the granddaughter of immigrants to to be
very president and who went.

Speaker 1 (00:55):
Welcome to Whitian House. I'm your host, Bio Henderson. In
this episode, we're going to remember housing activists Beneatha Flores
and tackle the subject of mental illness violent house from
two different perspectives, from a parent's view and from someone
with lived experience. Beneath the Flores legacy will be remembered

(01:35):
as a person who required dignified housing and was not
going to be dismissed with past measures.

Speaker 3 (01:42):
My name is Benita Flores. I am seventeen years old
and I'm living with theovetis I am here. You're watching
Tis Betel because the jennifisivicted me right now, so I
don't give up. I was received in a very strong

(02:04):
way and a very creative way.

Speaker 1 (02:09):
Benito passed away a few weeks ago at the age
of seventy one, fighting the good fight. City officials hastened
to go on record that they tried to help the needle,
but he was service resistant. Benito did not want to
return to houselessness. He offered for housing for four years
and to be seventy five years old and to be

(02:31):
in housed again. It's not a solution. Benito's position was
that he was already housed, why not extend him services
there instead of being involuntarily displaced.

Speaker 3 (02:44):
They created a homeless. Then they weren't happy with that.
They created forty one eighteen to bunice the homeless. So
the reclimbers came and say the houses that reclimbers have
that verty and the half only after that. They invented

(03:04):
that two year period when we went to take these houses,
we didn't pay for two years. We pay for permanent housing.
The low salaries is stayed the same.

Speaker 4 (03:15):
The rent is high.

Speaker 3 (03:16):
We cannot go and get a jam and get a house.
We cannot do that because you cannot pay the rent
with the minimum. Waves you go to find a job,
you are going to to make sixteen dollars an hour.
You cannot pay the rent. You need to live in
the street.

Speaker 1 (03:35):
Benito was the last founding reclaimer, making his last stand.
He remained unwavering in his position on dignified housing. The city, however,
had different plans. Their solution costs forty million, six hundred
and nine thousand, five hundred dollars the care plus and
voluntary removal of unhoused community members. Imagine where that fund

(03:58):
they could have gone to help, but need to stay
in his house. We'll talk about that in more detail
later in Unhoused News. Benito was not born unhoused. He
became unhoused. He worked for many years as a self
employed carpenter. However, his health issues made it difficult to
maintain employment. As time went on, he began living in

(04:21):
his van. Prior to the pandemic, Benito and other reclaimers
saw an opportunity once they observed decaying buildings in El Serno,
and thus began to occupy or reclaim them. During the pandemic.
They were successfully able to stay in those houses until
the city began eviction proceedings. Undeterred, Benita was not going

(04:43):
out without a fight.

Speaker 3 (04:44):
Are you ready to die as a martyr who goes
to this recom pass to publicated? It is not that greasius.
It's a planification, is an organizers plan because landlords have
reasen the brand and and the politicians are alowing the

(05:09):
went to rise. So that is the reason I'm going
to fight. Help and if I have have to die
like a martyr, I will would I I don't release
this this house. I don't accept direction.

Speaker 1 (05:25):
Thank you, and here's more on House News. Our next

(05:52):
story lends us in Sacramento, California. The city is now
considering a band or sleeping outside This proposal versus a
twenty eighteen policy that permitted camping from nine am to
six am on weekdays. Sacramento Mayor Kevin McCarthy says it's
a public and staff safety issue. Council member Phil Pluckbaumb

(06:14):
voted in favor of the ordinance. He is quoted as stating,
make Sacramento an inviting place for all our citizens to
come and do. Cities business not necessarily as a place
of refuge. Our next story. A federal judge finds that
Los Angeles failed to create enough shelter for unhoused people

(06:34):
required in their agreement. Judge David o'carter ordered stronger oversight
by a court appointed monitor to ask the hard questions
on behalf of at Jelinos, as well as quarterly hearings
to oversee compliance to create thirteen thousand more shelter beds.
Judge Carter stated, nearly seven unhoused community members die each

(06:58):
day in the County of Los Angeles. These depths are
preventable and represent a moral failure by all of us.
The judge also says the city breached the agreement in
four ways. One, the city did not provide a plan
for how it intends to create twelve nine hundred and
fifteen shelter beds as promised by June twenty twenty seven. Two,

(07:23):
it consistently missed milestones over the years for creating those beds. Three,
it incorrectly reported encampment reductions and disobeyed the court's order
on those actions. Four the city flouted responsibilities by failing
to provide accurate, comprehensive data. Was requested and did not

(07:45):
provide evidence to support the number of shelter beds it
was required to create. Our last story connects to our
story on Judge Carter's rebuke. For the fiscal year from
twenty twenty one through twoenty twenty four, here is the
expenses used to forcibly evict unhoused people through care and

(08:07):
Care plus. Fiscal year twenty twenty three to twenty twenty four,
the labor total was twenty one million, three hundred eleven
thousand and forty eight dollars. The expense total was nineteen million,
two hundred and ninety eight thousand, four hundred and fifteen dollars.
The total of labor and expenses is forty million, six

(08:28):
hundred nine thousand, five hundred dollars. For the year of
twenty twenty two to two thousand twenty three, the labor
was sixteen million, four hundred eighty nine thousand and five
hundred ninety one dollars. The expenses were seventeen million, three
hundred and six thousand, two hundred dollars. The total for

(08:49):
labor and expenses was thirty three million, seven hundred and
ninety five thousand, seven hundred ninety one dollars. For the
year of twenty twenty one till twoenty twenty two. The
labor was thirteen million, three hundred and sixty thousand, six
hundred and sixty three dollars. The expenses were twelve million,

(09:10):
five hundred and thirty two thousand, six hundred and thirty
one dollars. The total was twenty five million, eight hundred
and ninety three thousand, two hundred and ninety four dollars.
It lends itself questions of where the money has gone.
Here's the answer. Sweeping on House people, and that's on
House News. When we come back, I'll speak with returning

(09:33):
guests Anita about her experience being a parent of a
son dealing with mental health challenges and being unhoused. Welcome
back to Weedian House. I'm THEO Henderson. We have two
great interviews this week. First, let's dive into our interview

(09:54):
with Nita. We shared her experience as a parent whose
son is grappling with mental health challenges and being in house.
Here's our conversation.

Speaker 5 (10:07):
Hi, my name is Anita Woolfolk and I'm here with
THEO Henderson and we're going to talk about homelessness and
the struggles that a parent has coming especially out of
another stage.

Speaker 1 (10:26):
So tell us what is the most frustrating thing about
being a parent dealing with a child that's dealing with
these kind of issues.

Speaker 5 (10:34):
One of the challenges is if you have a child
that's dealing with mental health issues as well as substance abuse,
it can be have so many extenuating circumstances because I'm
out of state and he's here, and the system sometimes

(10:57):
let them slip through the cracks somehow, you know, taking
him to mental health services and trying to keep him there,
and they don't really care if they're there or not.
They don't have follow up like they should. And it's
like when they they not notice until something happens, when

(11:22):
you're begging them to please, can you fifty one point
fifty this person or you know, put them in a
thirty sixty ninety day treatment facility, and like I said,
and then when something crazy happens, then you know, it's
all eyes on them, you know, and per se to parent,

(11:44):
but you've been trying and never could get any help.

Speaker 6 (11:47):
So that was my circumstance.

Speaker 1 (11:49):
One of the things that I'm just hearing from just
hearing you mention it is one, you're looking for preventative
before something horrible happens. You want to be able to
cut it off at the past. The second thing which
brings up a question is like to dealing with people
that have some of these complexities, like have a mental
health issue or substance usage, it's the willingness to go.

(12:12):
Because of my own history of families that have those
issues is that when they are on the medication, they
feel like that they're cured. For example, if you have
like schizophrenia or other maladies, they believe that they're cured,
so they don't think that the treatment doesn't work or
shouldn't they shouldn't have to continue the treatment. Then they
get off and then there's an episode or some challenge

(12:34):
that's going on, and it starts again. How did you
get started on the cycle? What was the first time
that you had to deal with this and how did
you handle it?

Speaker 6 (12:44):
Well? Him as a child, you know, he had ADHD.

Speaker 5 (12:51):
It started with that and I seek medical advice, which
at that time they put him on a was rittling
or something like that. And then as he got older,
you know, then they feel they're normal, per se normal.
Then they can they feel like they can take a
drink or then the marijuana youth shage starts and god

(13:15):
knows what else, and then they stop using the medication
and so then, you know, then it's a whole lot
of chaos, you know, trying to figure out which way
do you go? You know, Okay, stop drinking, stop smoking.
Actually they don't realize that they can't really do anything,

(13:36):
and you try to talk to them, and then they
have these laws that you can't you y, you know,
they have to decide themself. M you know, well, how
does the person that that's not fully functionable make decisions
on their own when they're not fully all there?

Speaker 6 (13:56):
I you know, I it it boggles my mind.

Speaker 1 (14:00):
Well, it's also a conundrum too, and not to give
short shrift to what you're saying. For example, even when
we prepare for let's let's just say, because you're younger
than I am, that in ten years from now that
I might have advanced stage dementia or Alzheimer's. We usually
prepare for that, you know, by giving instructions of what

(14:20):
I want and when I want it, because I might
not be mentally able to make those decisions. And conversely,
the same kind of conversation doesn't seem to apply, or
it seems very difficult for people that are having you know,
a different type of mental malady, like for example, like
what you're mentioning, you know, maybe there was a do

(14:42):
you think there's like could be like foresight kind of
hearing or you know, when they're stabilized, you have the
card conversations and it says, let's stay, for example, that
something turns around and you have a won't say, a
relapse or have a setback, what do you want happen
to get you back on track? You know before? So

(15:03):
you know, you know, and maybe that's what I've been
thinking about. And I said, you know, that would probably help.
Because we do it with some other illnesses of other things,
why can't we apply that kind of conversation to do
the same with mental health? Yeah, what do you think
drug addiction?

Speaker 5 (15:19):
I think that's a good idea because as a parent,
my hands are tied. They tell me, you know, okay,
you can't make him do this orday, you know, but
once the system gets ahold of them, they make them.

Speaker 6 (15:35):
Do what I had been asking for them to do.

Speaker 5 (15:40):
You know, before this situation hadn't see you know, and
it's just really hard hard. It's really it bothers you
as a parent because you don't really know what to do. Okay,
the law says this, The law says that I'm looking
at my child seeing and that he's struggling. You know,

(16:03):
you call the police. Well at that time, wasn't it Karen?
Was it Karen Bass? She was like keeping the cops
hands tied. All I wanted them, you know, to do,
was to take him somewhere where he can get checked out,
assessed within what a seventy two hours or whatever.

Speaker 6 (16:24):
And it was like, oh, I.

Speaker 5 (16:26):
Feel sorry for you, but hey, do something about it.
You know, I appreciate the sympathy, but I need someone
to help me. He needs to be evaluated with at
least a seventy two hour period, you know.

Speaker 1 (16:41):
Well you know also too, there's a direct link too
when there is challenges. Only time that the law enforcement
or the system intervenes that they have to do something
atrocious or something that they cannot ignore, that they have
to put them in and a curse for you. And
what you're saying is why it's just something get awful
to happen, you know, you know, and even the person

(17:03):
that's dealing with it don't want something in there right mind,
wants something so horrible to happen. And they come back
down that they realized about that. You have to deal
with the challenges of their ildness, also legal challenges, and
they have to navigate a way through that. Have you
found out that's going on with you or are you
noticing that?

Speaker 6 (17:24):
Yes, very much so. That has been the problem.

Speaker 5 (17:30):
You know, my son spent out of control, and you know,
prior to this happening, I was, you know, hollering at screaming,
asking anybody. I mean, going from mental health downtown, calling
the mental health the one that comes out in the field.

(17:53):
I mean they even told me letting me sleep it
off and all this stuff, or you know, he says
he doesn't want it. It's you know, please seem like
talk them into what will you just come and talk
to me, you know, and we have a discussion and
I can mark everything.

Speaker 6 (18:11):
They just walk away. And thirdly, the.

Speaker 5 (18:19):
Police, they just would like their hands were tied when
it came to addiction, you know, because the mayor said
don't bother them or something like that.

Speaker 1 (18:29):
That's what well, you know, let's be clear too, because
a lot of times when we're dealing with the issue
of houselessness. They love to use twist words and blame
it like that their hands are tied and blaming it
and returning it back to policies and things like that.
But let's be clear, unless the person is in imminent

(18:49):
danger of harming another person or of themselves, they can't
do anything. Which is what brings up a different conversation
is that when they just I'm on the scene and
someone's maybe which I've noticed when I've been unhoused in
other parts and there's been on house people talking to themselves,
are yelling or arguing with themselves. They have they tell

(19:11):
the community there is no law for me to arrest
this person when they are arguing with themselves. You know,
you know you've talked. Yeah, you're just talking loud. Okay,
that's that's maybe a mental health issue. But the person
is not causing physical harm to you or anyone else.
They're having that conversation to themselves, so you know, you know,
we can you know, stand around, we can talk to

(19:32):
them or suggest things. But to be clear, which is
why I what I suggested earlier in our conversation is
to have when you have that a glimmer of opportunity
to get the person stabilized. They have a conversation. It's like,
you know, it's very hard to get you to this point.
Let's plan ahead because just in case something goes around,

(19:55):
maybe the medication is not working well or whatever, we
need to think ahead. We need to get some paperwork
taken care of that. Any event that you are unable
to make the informed decisions, I can make the decision
for you to get reached back into treatment or back
to get your medication stabilized, so you can be able
to make the informed decisions when you restabilize. That is

(20:19):
the conversation that I think we don't have. I think
you're talking about, like Gavin Newson was talking about involuntary
incarceration and voluntary commitment, and I think you know, I
was like, that may not always work, because then you
created an attack in or adversarial relationship before you have

(20:39):
the opportunity to give the person a chance to have
some foresight, you know, become part of the buy in
of their own treatment. And I think that is what
I see. It's like, you know, you can't force someone
to get treated if they're over at age eighteen and
you're having this frustration. Now your son is over eighteen, right,
yes he is.

Speaker 5 (20:59):
And I'm remember when he first well they called me
and told me that he was caught with drugs.

Speaker 1 (21:07):
Yes, and.

Speaker 5 (21:09):
Through my discovery and giving him the information, I said,
he he has to be using because he's never been
a drug dealer. And I thought at that point that they,
you know, being caught with drugs, Okay, we're gonna you
got to do mandatorium thirty days or something. Okay, they

(21:30):
let him go with two years of paper. But I mean,
knowing that he's using, he's still free to you know,
keep using, which is going to spend him even further
out of control.

Speaker 6 (21:45):
And that's exactly what happened.

Speaker 3 (21:47):
You know.

Speaker 5 (21:48):
I thought that the first the incident, it should have
been mandated that they get some kind of help.

Speaker 1 (21:58):
Well, see again, that's good. That's where the Steve He's
high part of the conversation is too with me, is
that even when he had that first incident, it still
would have been like he's been involuntary forced to do it,
and he might have bump against that. But if we
like again like they say, that's a very hard this
is a conundrum because before that incident. You didn't know

(22:19):
he was have these issues. Maybe you know before it
gets to that point when you have to call it, says, Okay,
don't worry about it. Let's have this current conversation before
things get out of control, before so you don't have
to wait for someone to push him or force him
to do it. Okay, remember what we talked about before
when everything was calm and stabilized. Now we can do that,

(22:40):
and that's what we're going to do. We're going to
stay on that path to get you back on track.
So you know, we both agreed to it, and you
understood this is what's going to happen, and that is
a different thing than when he has that incident. Then
they forced him to go in treatment. He's not gonna
want to go to the treatment. You know, it might
not be a guaranteed you want to go on treatment
even though that discussion, but at least it's a preparation

(23:04):
to know that anytime something jumps off, you have it
on paper, you have it on documentation that no matter
what this is, what's going to happen was how he's
going to be treated. And it may also make a
difference in the destination of how legally where he has
to be caught off in the system. He was like, Okay,
we go, he has these challenges, we need to be

(23:26):
able to do this or because a lot of times
what I noticed too, when people are on substances and
on medication, you know, it becomes more of a you
Ford kind of kind of experience. And some drugs are
stronger than others that overrise that feeling believe in they're cured.

(23:47):
Because I have a person that believes and there's the
pain in it behind. You're not curing, You're just the
only reason why, the reason why you're doing so well,
it's because you're taking the medica's a long time regularly
someone calling up with you.

Speaker 5 (24:02):
Now I'm supposed to be talking to an attorney about
a mental evaluation, which he was in the process of
doing that when I had here, but they had grabbed him.

Speaker 1 (24:14):
So were gonna asks because and we're just and just
go however you were you came here because you found
out what happened, Just.

Speaker 6 (24:23):
Tell us, yeah, yeah, I I came here.

Speaker 5 (24:27):
Well, mother, instinct I felt something was wrong because he
had not called m and my instinct sick. Come on
out to California and I did, and I was looking
looking looking for him, and I ran into a young
lady and I asked her had she seen my son?
And she says, oh, I tell you what. First looked

(24:48):
at the jail because I think a situation happened prior to,
you know, to you coming here. And I said, well,
you know, okay, I'll do that. And when I went there,
that's when I found out that he was there. He
had been there for about a week. Is he still
incarcerated or yes, he's still in car he hasn't had
his court that yet or whatever they call that.

Speaker 6 (25:11):
I don't forget the terms, but.

Speaker 1 (25:13):
Yeah, okay. So now, once the mental evaluation is taken
and done, what would that do for his chances of
getting some help.

Speaker 5 (25:22):
I'm hoping that it would help the situation, because then
they'll know theirself.

Speaker 6 (25:27):
I mean, I've gone, you know, meet him being my child.

Speaker 5 (25:31):
I've seen the changes, the depression, the over the anxiety,
all of the little stages prior to this, you know.
So I'm hoping that this evaluation will get him the help.

Speaker 6 (25:48):
That he really needs.

Speaker 1 (25:49):
Is he just taking any medication now or yes.

Speaker 5 (25:52):
They do have him on medication now that he's incarcerated.
This is the help that he needed all the time.
You know, as a parent, I needed to help all
the time to help you. So I'm hoping that this
will help his sister his situation.

Speaker 1 (26:13):
Did you have any other children that that? How are
they're tanneling? Coping with us? Oh?

Speaker 6 (26:18):
His brothers are like this, can't you know that this
can't be happening? He what you know?

Speaker 5 (26:25):
They they're like shocked that he's ever in even in
this situation because he wasn't around drugs. Drugs weren't that
opened in the state that we come from, and here
is like a everyday thing. And if you don't aren't grounded,

(26:45):
you can be caught up before you know it. And
that's exactly what happened. You're dealing with mental health issues
and then on top of that, you put in drugs
in your system. So it can be really mind below bottling.

Speaker 6 (27:02):
For a parent. And I know he after he got
somewhat sober, saying how the heck did I get here?
You know what I'm saying. So I don't know. I'm
just praying that everything works out on best in his favor.

Speaker 1 (27:19):
You know, I was going to say, because you mentioned
earlier in a conversation that you were doing all of
this coming from Ohio here, how you know, how long
have you been here and how long do you have
you do you do you do this regularly or is
this just something that you know, you feel that you
have to follow through or it's not going to get done,
or what's going on.

Speaker 6 (27:40):
I've been coming here every month.

Speaker 5 (27:46):
Since way before January because I felt that he needed
that extra help that he wasn't getting or that not having.
I even tried to get him a case manager, you know,
and they don't follow through.

Speaker 6 (28:01):
I got so many cards in my purse from this program,
that program, the skid row program, the.

Speaker 5 (28:09):
I can't even call some of the names of the programs,
but no one followed him through, you know what I'm saying,
to see how check it up on how you do it?

Speaker 6 (28:20):
So I had to do it.

Speaker 5 (28:22):
So I can't come here regularly just about every month,
you know, which is a costly situation. But because he's
my child, I love him, I'm gonna do whatever I
have to do to try to get him guided the
right direction.

Speaker 6 (28:38):
And yeah, I've been coming here for some years now.

Speaker 1 (28:43):
So if there's anything for the legislators of lawmakers to
do the help change these things. What do you think
suppose that you would say to.

Speaker 5 (28:50):
Them, I think that they need to have case managers
follow up with people to see where they're mental and
drug use or whatever is, and possibly you know, have
conversation with them, talk to them about maybe coming to

(29:12):
some meetings or something like that, you know, something that
would draw them to come, you know, other than five
or ten minutes or fifteen minutes.

Speaker 4 (29:22):
Did you do this?

Speaker 5 (29:23):
Did you do that? You know, somewhere you can sit
and kind of observe the person and see are they
a little bit out of control?

Speaker 6 (29:32):
You know what I'm saying.

Speaker 1 (29:33):
Also, you know what you're mentioning is too is gonna
that takes a little more time intensive as not only
is that funding, but one thing too. I noticed particularly here,
even though that there is such an ease in substances here,
there's also a blabing and shaming kind of element, a
stigma here that like they believe that magically you've someone's
on substances or acting out of the ordinary that just

(29:56):
penalized them or criminalize them, which makes it to me,
makes it much more difficult for people to get treated
or to be honest about their issues because we just
and want to say throw the baby with the out
with the bath order.

Speaker 5 (30:09):
Well that kind of thing, right, And I think a
person is using actually feels the stigma of other people.
That's why they don't reveal that, Okay, I'm using crack,
I'm using heroin, I'm using fetanol, whatever, because they're already
put in a circle of all they're bad people, you know,

(30:33):
which they're.

Speaker 6 (30:34):
Just dealing with substance abuse disorder, you know.

Speaker 5 (30:39):
So I think about all the time, how how we
could come together and spend more time with the people.
I'm gonna tell you, sometimes they don't have the right diagnosis,
you know what I'm saying. And if you've had mental

(30:59):
health is shoes prior to the drug youth, and you've
putting all of this on top of one another, so
now you do all addicted, you know, it's pretty much
so and sometimes some and then it's some caseworkers that
don't care as long as they get paid. You know,
you need somebody who really cares what's going on.

Speaker 1 (31:23):
Well also too, that burn out too because low wages
that they get as well, and some of them are
on the cusp of being on the street themselves, so
their focus and may not be entirely devoted to the
envitterment of people that they're supposed to be servicing.

Speaker 5 (31:39):
Just hoping that the programs to help alcohol and drug
addiction continue to not cut you know, because they they
are very much needed. And you know, I even thought
about coming out here and helping out, being out each

(32:00):
worker to help women and men make a logical decision.

Speaker 6 (32:05):
Come on, you can come to treatment. It's not gonna
kill you, you know.

Speaker 5 (32:09):
So it's very It's opened my mind, expanded my mind
into how many.

Speaker 6 (32:16):
People need help. My son need help. I need help
to understand, you know, more about the disease.

Speaker 1 (32:25):
I'm always a owner too, of like we also need
as a society house and on house people need to
understand the benefits and understanding if someone has an overdose.
We need to be dark can trained. It just shouldn't
always fallow on the emergency because which I mentioned to.
Suppose you walk in and you see your child having
an OD overdose and you don't have the training or

(32:48):
the wherewithal to be able to save them, and you
can save them, just like if someone's choking or have
you need CPR. You know that skill. Why can't you
be able to use nark can to be able to
save someone's life because of the stigma and because we
don't have an honest conversation about how we can become
much more enlightened and evolved in the understanding of substitutage.

(33:09):
It's a symptom to a problem, it's not the problem itself.
And I think that's a very hard thing for people
were in a society that's a punitative we're judging and
blaming society. So it's going to take some time. And
you know, Trump is cutting all kind of funding, particularly Medicaid,
so we don't know what it's going to look like
in the next few years. It's definitely not gonna be
looking positive or looking great for the better. It may

(33:32):
look even worse. So well, this is THEO Henderson from
Weedy and Howse I thank you all for listening. May
we again meet in the light of understanding. Thank you
so much to Anita for her time and for sharing

(33:52):
her experiences. And when we come back, I'll speak with
Claire Courtwright. Welcome back. This is THEO Henderson with Weeding
and House. My second guest today is Claire court Right,
who I caught up with in early June. Claire's going
to educate us on the peaks and valleys of her

(34:14):
experiences dealing with mental health challenges. Here's our talk. We
have another exciting guest here, a very outstanding person, and
I don't want to reveal too many of us a
secrets too soon, but we have Claire court Right. Miss
court Right has been very instrumental in dealing with houselessness
and the tangent enshoes that are resolved. But also she

(34:37):
had a quite a quicker scare herself. But I'll let
her talk a little bit about it. But what further
do miss court Right tell us a little bit about yourself.
You could tell the story better than I could.

Speaker 4 (34:48):
Sure, thank you so much for the introduction THEO. So,
I guess not too much to tell. I'm a person
with lived experience. I'm an attorney, and I stumbled into
doing sort of state level behavioral health policy work. So
working on a lot of the bills that have been
coming out of you know, the Governor's office, primarily over
the last couple of years related to behavioral health. So

(35:10):
it was just a baptism by fire. It was sort
of accidentally in the middle of quite a bit of it,
I think due to willingness to speak, and probably not
too much more, didn't have any business speaking.

Speaker 1 (35:22):
But did you mentioned lived experience because for people that
are just out in, can you tell us a little
bit of what lived experience that you're talking on?

Speaker 4 (35:30):
Yeah, for sure, I have lived experience of bipolar one
disorder and all of the associated you know, economic struggles
and life struggles that come with that, and a lot
of the systemic discrimination that exists as a result of
that as well.

Speaker 1 (35:44):
So this is open as a good conversational point because
not many conversations really revolve around how you've taken your
diagnosis and you embraced it. But also use it as advocacy,
if you will, on the matter how long have you
been known that you were diagnosed and how did you
get to this point where others that probably are listening
and having similar issues would probably like to step in

(36:07):
your footsteps or would like to get some tips on.

Speaker 4 (36:10):
Oh that's a great question. It's a really long journey
because I don't think that there's very good well there's
not very good public information about what the actual experience
is like, So it takes a long time for sort
of your own internal recognition to happen because of the
misdescription that exists in the world. So, you know, I

(36:30):
think about the same time that I started really experiencing
it is also when I started becoming an advocate, because
it's necessity, right, either you're resisting some sort of force
over you in the system, or you are trying to
figure out what this all really is, you know, both
socially and sort of medically. So I think as soon

(36:53):
as I started experience there's probably fifteen years ago, I
also started becoming an advocate because the first thing I
had to learn was, you know, how to get out
of a nine thousand dollars balanced bill from a hospital.
I'm so I think a lot of us like start
that way of having to help ourselves and then seeing
that there's so little help for other members or our

(37:14):
community just naturally grows from there.

Speaker 1 (37:17):
Were you if I may ask, please, if you don't
want to ask answer, that's perfectly fine. Have you ever
experienced initially in the earliest stages where you're misdiagnosed or
did they have a handle on the conversation, Because I've
have interviewed friends and guests on the show that they
don't immediately come with the diagnosis. There's a lot of

(37:37):
hits that missed and then a lot of hospitalizations. And
I don't want to parrot the same stereotates unless it's
like schizophrenia, if such an extreme thing, then they can
really easily put a finger on it. If it's not,
then you know, if you have other diagnoses, like my
friend that has adonia, it's not that easy to understand,

(37:58):
or people gave her hard time saying she didn't want
to work, she was being lazy, but it was a
real medical condition, a real challenge, that real a bilt
to health disorder that she has, and it took a
minute for them to finally get a diagnosed.

Speaker 4 (38:14):
Right Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely, just absolutely very similar experience
of not knowing myself and also just the imprecision around
it in medicine, right, like we don't actually know what
causes any of it. We don't have great pharmacological treatments
for too many people, and so yeah, there's a lot
of bafflement involved, which is, you know why one of

(38:37):
the things that I've primarily been an advocate for in
the positive space, when you're not trying to like kill
every bad bill or whatever is really peer support, right,
so the people that have a unique internal experience that
are able to relate to and have insight into and
therefore uniquely assist other people because it is really kind

(39:00):
of the dark ages still when it comes to this stuff.
I mean, I can't think of such an impactful set
of illnesses that we understand so little about.

Speaker 1 (39:08):
So which brings another good question, what things that we
should know from the top about your diagnosis to educate
us or so we can get right? And in two,
because when you're mentioning peer support, how can we get
more peer support in the way of educating people that
are neophytes. They're not aware of a tune or aware
of it.

Speaker 4 (39:28):
I don't know, Gosh, you could say a lot about it,
because I find even you know, having been a behavioral
health provider and so working with people, I'm constantly discovering
sort of different facets, even of my own diagnosis that
people don't know about. Like, for instance, I haven't personally
experienced this, but I have many friends and some others

(39:49):
who have that. Some people when they experience psychosis, they
also experience amnesia. They don't remember a dang thing that happened,
and there's a lot of miscommunication with people, you know what,
I representing folks legally. Sometimes I would ask people what
had happened and they would say, I don't know, and
other people took that as denialism or you know, not

(40:10):
dealing with an issue, when in fact it was just
like literally losing your memory is actually a symptom. And
so there's a lot of aspects like that that I
think people don't really have any knowledge of because it's
just not common knowledge. But I think in general, I
would say that my own experience, it would take a
long time to describe because it doesn't.

Speaker 1 (40:29):
Describe like a textbook, right, right, But you can give
us the highlights, you know, I don't want to, you know,
put you on the spot that you got to illumerate
every single one, but you know, give us a few
things that you know, could start push the needle from
the dark ages into some more of a light fair fair.

Speaker 4 (40:45):
I would say, the first thing for this disorder is
that it's a full body thing. People think of that
as primarily an emotional you know, emotional extremes, something happening
to your entire body. So for me, it's like it
can also be a power, right, Like if you're sped up,
you can be really creative, really quick witted, You can

(41:08):
concentrate for super long periods of time. But then if
you go too far in that direction, things start to
fall apart, and then you know, in the in the
opposite direction. Yeah, I think people don't really understand like
depression in general. It's such a common word and such
a common concept, but if you see it where it's
clearly not situational, it's like something in the machinery is

(41:31):
going haywire. It's really in the machinery, and it's very
difficult for people externally to see that and know that
actually as your you know, as your friend was interpreted
as being lazy or you know, when you don't have
access to someone else's experience, there's a lot of skepticism
or misinterpretation because it's just it's simply you would have

(41:52):
to be inside somebody's body to really know, and so
there's a mysterious aspect to it. But I think that
too is I think the thing that people don't really
is how physical this stuff is, Like, you know, a
kind of fatigue that you can't stand up for five
minutes or a kind of emotional experience where it's like
every bad thing you've ever felt in your life turned

(42:13):
up so long you can't be and you can't suffer
that much, right, people can't suffer that much and be okay.
So I mean, and you know, people can, I guess
read the textbooky type descriptions of things, but I don't
think that they're particularly accurate. And then, you know, if
people want to know more, it is hard to know
more because there's not really a public portrayal that comes

(42:37):
from people with lived experience. It tends to be, you know,
some kind of hollywoodized portrayal of things. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (42:46):
Well, I noticed one thing too when you mentioned about
depression and into even that conversation alone. Depression is looks
very different with different disorders. Yes, And the reason why
she was called lazy and not willing to work is
because her depression was like paralysis. And I have two
friends that have those challenges, and people didn't didn't understand

(43:08):
that it was to the point where friends have to
come and feed her or friends have to come, and
that that it's a little bit different depression than when
people don't want to get out of the better more
or they're overwhelmed and they're just now I'm gonna say,
feeling sad, but it's more widely encompassing than that. And
I think that's when you said, like, yeah, because Hollywood

(43:30):
doesn't really focus on the other parts, like Adonia when
she's going through this, or my other friend that literally
had to be put into a comforts lescent place because
of that depression was so severe, so you know, and
she's doing fine now, But was explaining that to me
on the show, of how intense it was, and to

(43:52):
understand that mental health issues and disorders are so nebulous
and so expansive that you just cannot just kneel it
down on to like you said, depression like when I
because I remember her then I remember my other friend,
don't even but she said she sat in her car
for sixteen hours, you know, literally not being able to
move because she was so depressed. She couldn't drive to work,

(44:15):
but she got up early in the morning, she got
on and got dressed, but she couldn't make the transition
to go to well. Obviously she lost the job eventually,
but that's another part. And when she became in house.
This is the other part of the conversation. That I
don't think people understand the full scope of it. So
when they see people like they don't understand, they make

(44:36):
the snap judgments they're resistant to treatment, or they are
when they're making having an episode or break from reality.
These things go on without a clear understanding the inner
workings of what's going on with the person. It's not
always such and usage, and people misdiagnosed or mischaracterize what
people are going through. And I think this is such

(44:58):
a very important converse station to have.

Speaker 4 (45:01):
Yeah, I think part of the hollywoodization of things too
is just right. The narration never comes from the person
experiencing it. And it's like if you go watch, you know,
some TV show, these illnesses will be portrayed as horrible,
but they'll be portrayed as horrible because of the things
that sane people will do to you, not because of

(45:22):
what the internal experience is. But I will say, like,
I don't know anyone who you know has a diagnosis
across this spectrum, and myself and so many of my
friends do that hasn't suffered tremendously, And there's just a
real lack of empathy, I think because other people haven't
experienced this same thing and their primary you know, interaction

(45:48):
with somebody that they know or suspect, especially on house people,
is how this person is affecting me, not what's going
on internally for this person, or how how in the
heck is this person sposed to navigate.

Speaker 1 (46:02):
The world like this, you know, and the limited resources too.
I remember, and I don't want to get too far
off the topic, but I also knew a gentleman he's schizophrenia,
and he was telling me the frustration that he has
that he has schizophrenia, but I believe he also has
like the outbursts, the verbal outbursts, like a Tourette's kind

(46:22):
of thing, and he knows the triggers and things that's
going to happen to him. And what he would do
is he would try to go in places that would
kind of be secluded or in a place where it
was it's away from people to have the episode. But
people would see him going through this episode, and you
know what they do, They will call the police. And

(46:43):
he said, how frustrating it became because now he's got
to worry about being attacked physically whatever, and still go
through this episode. He had the enough of the presence
of mind to know that he had to juggle all
the balls at the same time and something is going
to fall. And when you have you bring on an
armed response from a police officer who claims they have

(47:05):
mental health training, but yet their first thing is tasting
and beating the hell out of or shooting, then you know,
it makes the encounter much more dangerous.

Speaker 4 (47:15):
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely, Yeah, the involvement of police is a
huge problem, say the least.

Speaker 1 (47:23):
Yes, Yes, So when you say you're advocating what resources,
what things can be done to help educate the audience,
but also to give some hope to people that are
experiencing this, because you said you're advocating for peer support
and things like that. So let's talk a little bit
more on that. Sure.

Speaker 4 (47:41):
I think the first thing that I tell people who
don't have any knowledge of the resources that exist in
our systems is that there are virtually none. I think
that's the first thing that unless you you know, work
in this field or you've experienced it personally, you will
not have a knowledge of what there is not And

(48:05):
so you would think, you know, I mean, folks with
mental illness don't have any entitlements from the state of California,
right so you're stuck. Social Security Disability or SSI. This
is what nine hundred and fourteen dollars a month if
it's SSI, or if it's SSDI, you might get twelve
hundred if you have a work history, maybe a little more.

(48:26):
But there's no income, right, there's no entitlement to income
from the federal level. There is no entitlement to housing.
Disabled people can qualify for hood, but we know that
that's then on the ground that Section eight is you know,
I mean maybe people don't like for the communities that
were from you probably do. No, there's a tenure Section
eight waiting list for most people don't know that exactly.

Speaker 1 (48:48):
Some people the.

Speaker 4 (48:49):
Legislator don't know that, right, So you just you don't
you're not going to have a social safety net. There's
no income, there's no housing. A lot of times there's
no adequate medical care either. And then there's no adequate
supplement to medical care because I think one of the
things that's difficult about these disabilities is like, you know,
people think of intellectual or developmental disabilities as sort of

(49:12):
permanent static states, and we're willing to invest in resources
that are simply quality of life enhancing for people with disabilities,
but in this context, people sort of think you're either
curable or we're just going to put you in an institution.
So you know, this this idea of resources that would
just be quality of life enhancing for people that doesn't

(49:33):
really exist either. So that's fairly bleak THEOL. But you know,
I really want to hit on the medical stuff too,
because right now it's not just the federal government that's
going after our social safety net healthcare insurance, it's also
the state of California and so and it comes out
of nowhere. So you know, for folks that obviously do

(49:56):
have serious and impactful illnesses, that will will not be
it will not go well for anyone if they don't
have access to some modalities and forms of treatment, and
we're seeing that stuff just dry up. We met through
friends because I was instrumental in no on Prop one,
which was basically, frankly, you know, the news administration doging

(50:19):
our state systems. So I assume everyone knows the verb
to doge. It needs to come in and slash and burn.
So you know, we first had this wave of cutting
all this adjunct funding, the stuff that's just cash outside
of health insurance to do things like peer support or
drop in centers, or alternative and culturally specific treatments or

(50:43):
prevention and early intervention. Right, there was just all this
body of work or non clinical respite cares. So there
was like all this stuff that was just financed out
of our tax dollars, not part of health insurance, and
was meant to augment the health insurance system. And they
came in and were just like, we don't get this.
You know, we don't think this is efficient. We just

(51:04):
think that what everyone needs our mental health probation basically,
like you know, you need to take your meds, and
you need to get a job, and you need to
do whatever. So all of that money that was supporting
sort of alternative stuff basically got cut in favor of
pushing it into some like supposedly expanded Medicaid services or

(51:25):
medical services. And now we're seeing threats to that expansion
from the federal level. So it's not good. And I
would say in the last you know, two weeks probably
the state of California proposed to reinstitute the asset limit
test or disabled people and elderly people on Medicaid. So
California is medical, It's you know the federal Medicaid program

(51:48):
in California is called medical and the budget through a
budget motion, which is budget action budget trailer bill, which
is not a normal way to make law. The governor
is proposing to return the two thousand dollars asset limit
test to getting health insurance if you're disabled. So what
does that mean. It means you have to have a

(52:08):
low enough income, and then you also can't own anything,
virtually anything it's two thousand dollars worth of stuff, or
you get kicked off health insurance. And maybe he hurt
me when I was talking to talking about people living
in their nineteen ninety six Honda Civic with no income
and why they should have healthcare even though their cars
worth two thousand and one dollars. So it looks like

(52:29):
they probably will exclude home ownership and car ownership from assets.
But if you have more than two thousand dollars in
the bank, you will not have health insurance for the disabled,
even if you have zero income. That's what they're proposing,
and that's on top of what's going on at the
federal level, which will also disenroll people. I think the
primary concern for disabled people is work requirements in Medicaid

(52:52):
at the federal level, they usually try to exempt out
people with disabilities, but they can make those those exemptions
so narrow, are so burdensome that the result is people
getting disenrolled. So I think the future right now, unfortunately
in California, is going to look like a lot more
uninsured people, even people with severe and disabling conditions, which.

Speaker 1 (53:17):
Also uptails nicely into the next point of I was
mentioning about the EBT and the requirements. What they're doing.
They're forcing older people, even disabled people to work under
stricter guidelines. They've recently passed it, and I was wondering
to see this how this portends very ominously, because not
only if you are not physically able to sustain yourself

(53:40):
and into now you're dealing with starvation, you're dealing with
the privation of needs necessities in order to survive. Now
it's become much more dystopian. And I was wondering, what
do you see? What is your perspective on the recent
Republican budget cuts against SNAP and EBT.

Speaker 4 (53:58):
Actually, I have been so swamp trying to figure out
what they were doing with medicaid and medical in California.
And because you get no notice and then you have
no virtually no opportunity if you're going to do advocacy
to respond. So I haven't actually looked particularly at the
snap stuff, and you will be educating me, but I mean,
as you know, it's only been how many years has
it even been since you've been able to get Social

(54:20):
Security SSISSDI and food stamps? Not that many years?

Speaker 1 (54:24):
Yes, to give a little more background on it as well,
that before women that had children were exempt and could
get snapped. But there's this point if their child is
seven years old, then they must get back to verb now.
And the person that is like older disabled but to
like sixty four years old, they have to work and
the term limit is three months to be on EBT SNAP.

(54:47):
So that seems like a disaster to me. And I
just wanted to see why all of this is going on,
and one of it brings back the purpose of the
show is to educate people that want to really understand
how bad things are and how challenging dealing with houselessness is.
It's not just as simple this person made bad choices

(55:07):
and then they're following on part times too bad so
sad it's like this is not out of tandem. These
things are well thought out. These things are engineered to
create as much misery, much displacement, and much pain to
vulnerable people almost often and not people of color or
people with disabilities, and also the intersections that run through

(55:28):
poverty to suffer as much as they possibly can, and
to blame them for their own misfortunes.

Speaker 4 (55:35):
Yeah, I mean this will have a traumatic Snap cuts
would have a dramatic especially if there's work requirements. And
I mean, I think it's also important to just say,
you know, we're using the acronyms SSI, SSDI or SNAP,
and the S in all of those stands for the
same thing. It stands for supplemental. Yes, it's never supposed

(55:55):
to have been enough money to eat or enough money
to live on. And so to you know, cut the
legs out of something that is supposed to be supplemental
and that tens of millions of Americans currently qualify for
and rely on. And I just can't, I mean, obviously

(56:16):
when you for too many people, right, the supplement isn't
to supplement, it's the whole thing, is.

Speaker 1 (56:23):
The first thing, especially if you're in the house, especially.

Speaker 4 (56:25):
If you're on house, especially if you're disabled and you
don't work, the supplement is all you get. It's never
been enough. And you know, the way that this kind
of immediately dovetails and affects people with disabilities is like
the rules, the legal rules under which we institutionalize people
in California are you can't provide for your own food, clothing,
and shelter, and you have, you know, now a substance

(56:49):
use disorder or a mental illness. And so it's a
bit of a catch twenty two, right if you're unable
to work, including because you're unwelcome, right, including because of
systemic just crimination, including because it's going to be difficult
to get hired. If you're on house, you don't have
somewhere to shower, clean up, or simply people there's a
stigma associated with you or negative feelings associated with you

(57:12):
because you are in house, even if you're trying to
dig yourself out, you know, in the same thing with
many forms of disability. And so you know, it's a
catch twenty two for folks. It's you can't provide for yourself,
and these strings attached of if the state has to
provide for you, as the state can do any damn
thing it wants, and that should be really concerning to people,

(57:33):
I think to all people, because we shouldn't have our
benefits systems be forms of state control. I mean, anyone
may end up needing it. And I don't understand the
point of becoming more harsh, creating harsher conditions for people
when we're clearly living in bad economic times, in extraordinarily

(57:57):
historically bad economic times when it comes to housing. And
I don't know what the powers that be think the
cumulative effect of this will be, but it's not going
to be nothing. We're talking about a very large number
of people, and I think that's something that is different.
I don't think, you know, we haven't seen administrations really

(58:18):
go quite so hard after the Social Safety Net since
you know, I mean I was too young for Clinton,
uh you know, because I think that's the last time
it was sort of in the national consciousness that there
was like such a thing as a welfare queen and
we're going to make it stop. But I was too
young to really understand what was happening then in terms

(58:38):
of policy. I was probably like ten, So I don't know,
but it feels like it's been a long time since
We've been in a place where there is a real
concerted desire and insufficient pushback to just sort of rip
away a lot of this social safety net stuff. And
I don't know what the impact is going to be

(58:59):
because it's just too many people. It's so many people,
and so I you know, as a political calculus, I'm
kind of like when y'all think's gonna happen. No, I mean,
I don't want to laugh about it because it's not funny,
because there is too much misery. But it's not good
economic times, and you know, and not only that, but
it's various other forms of restriction. And you know, everyone's

(59:21):
familiar with what happened after you know, let them Eat Cake,
So don't let them Eat Cake could be a new
episode and we'll see what happens.

Speaker 1 (59:31):
We'll be right back with more from Claire Cardway. Welcome
back to Weedian House. I'm Theo Henderson. Let's jump back
into my conversation with Claire, which brings up an interesting
point too, because this looks like we're going to go
into economic tail spin because there's no way with the

(59:53):
screws being tightened on every facet of poor and vulnerable
people there's going to be some kind of movement or
there's going to be some crying out because you cannot
cut off or you cannot demonize a vulnerable people and
expect them to stay silent. You know, you know, it
can work for a brief moment that you can claim
them as the bad people or the bad guys, but

(01:00:15):
then there's going to be a certain period of time,
like for example, as we are, we're going to take
a moment to talk of dumpy Trump about his his
followers that are shocked that they are being mistreated or
being deported or they're losing their jobs. And this is
my response to that. It's like you were, okay, we're
hurting other people, but you did not calculate that this

(01:00:36):
was going to be you were going to be hurt.
So my empathy is very marginally marginal on their their
misery and role. But the point of it is if
they wasn't being the fact that you will be applauding
Matt Lee or sycopathically against them suffering of us a
vulnerable people. And the thing of it is now that
this is going to be hit a wide net of people.

(01:00:57):
This is just not going to just be on only
one community. This is going to hit people in every
aspect of life, from house to unhoused to housing and secure.
These is going to impact people, and people may do
creative solutions to meet the need and meet the moment,
you know. And like a friend of mine used to say,
take penitentiary chances in order to surlive, you know.

Speaker 4 (01:01:19):
So yeah, I mean absolutely it will have a broad
economic impact because it also you know, this is a
form of I mean, you're it's a form of consumption, right,
Like we're paying for healthcare, we're paying for food, right,
We're paying for housing, and so that does ripple out
into the broader economy. And yeah, so I don't think

(01:01:42):
anybody can really calculate exactly how great the impact will
be right now. But again, it's it's really hard to
sort of sell the narrative that individual, you know, responsibility
is the problem when it's a third of the country
at least, right, And I mean, if you're talking about
non duplicated numbers between you know, children that are on

(01:02:03):
Medicaid or people receiving SNAP or people receiving SSISSDI, because
you don't know what they're going to mess with, you're
starting to talk about like at least a third of
the country, there's only three hundred and thirty million people.
When you're telling me there's you know, seventy two million
people on Medicaid or forty two million people on food stamps,

(01:02:24):
you know, it becomes I think, more and more difficult
to use the sort of economic segregation in the country
as a way to that not knowing not knowing how
it is that you fall off the treadmill of capitalism
in the United States because you haven't fallen off yet,
but the ways that you could fall off are infinite,
and so you know, people who haven't ever fallen off

(01:02:47):
or come close to falling off, have maybe a sense
that it's it's only one or two ways that this
could happen, when it's it's really infinite. But when you start,
you know, when you're so economically segregated in the neighborhood
that you live in you can't afford to live in,
you start having people that also have kind of a
stale and non various experience in some ways, but you

(01:03:10):
come from a different kind of neighborhood, or you lived
in a different kind of neighborhood, or you're in the
lower classes. I guess really where I came from. Then
you do just in the back of your pocket have Oh, well,
this is what happened to my neighbor, this is what
happened to my friend's husband is a veteran. He died
by suicide. To young kids, you know, another person died

(01:03:31):
of cancer, or there was an accident or or I mean,
it's just and especially now when things have gotten very,
very difficult with the cost of housing. It could be
anyone at any time, and you don't want to feel
that vulnerability, but it definitely exists for everyone, especially in California.

Speaker 1 (01:03:52):
No, you know, I always say in order for oppressing
to be as effective as it is, you need participants
that are invested in their own oppression. But also that
if you can demonize the people, then you can criminalize them.
And it goes and send hand to hand with the
verdict or the ettic that President Trump mentioned about the

(01:04:13):
unhoused community on public lands and telling about mass sweeps
and things like that, these kind of actions are happening
under our nose, on our attention or lack thereof, and
we are at a point that we need to ask
some questions like what can we do, what should we do,
and is there is there anything we can do?

Speaker 4 (01:04:35):
Yeah, I mean, I'm asking myself this too, because you know,
I'm blessed because even though you know, I haven't been
on house for long periods of time or dealt with
completely unsheltered homelessness, and I have increasingly, you know, as
I've done different work, and I've realized that I should
talk to my neighbors, that they are my neighbors. That

(01:04:56):
when I've lived in a neighborhood and there are folks
that are in house that I'm unable to house too,
I just don't have the resources to do it. Can't
let somebody be in my apartment unfortunately, or what it
house at least one of my friends. But you know,
as I just started to get to know people and
have conversations with people, I realized that the culture really
has to change. And I realized that for me, I mean,

(01:05:20):
this is just like the way that I'm thinking about
it right now, but like this economic segregation and the
suspicion that you're supposed to have across sort of lines
of class. And the more that I talk to people
and got to know people, the more that it changed me.
You know, it changed my culture and my way of
thinking and who I think about as my neighbors and

(01:05:41):
even how I think about my neighborhood as safe or
not safe. But it's it has been a very trying
and overwhelming time, both at the state and the federal level,
where when you do know people and you know the
inaccuracies and the kind of the vicious narratives that are
pushed around people, you know, you know, it's like really

(01:06:01):
easy to spot a stereotype when you know the person
that is supposed to fit the stereotype and doesn't, And
so you know, more and more and more, just in
my own life, I started to see that and you
feel like really powerless right now because it's like a
blitz creed. There's just a lot going on that is laying,
you know, economic problems at the feet of people who

(01:06:24):
are at least able to do something about it. Because
I kind of think in some ways that even the
you know, is it is it your fault that you're
on house, Is it your fault that you're mentally ill?
Is it your fault that you're poor? I mean, in
some ways that's not even responsive to the to the situation,
because it's really who has the power to do something
about it. And my folks are virtually powerless, virtually powerless,

(01:06:48):
and so you know, part of it is just it's
non responsive because it's like, okay, even if you can
use all of your carcural nets and your force treatment
systems and the way that that's melding together, it's illogical.

Speaker 6 (01:07:01):
And they know it.

Speaker 4 (01:07:02):
It's like, even if you restore someone to sanity and
sobriety after ten years on the street, than what that's
enough to be housed in California. No, it's not right.
This notion that personal responsibility is even an effective avenue
to address some of these things seems kind of bunk
to me, you know, but I don't know. I've really

(01:07:23):
been thinking about it too. And you know, I defend
my friends where I can. We have our little mutual
aid networks. Is like somebody's jammed up, call me, call
you know, we'll figure it out. We don't know how
to do it, but we'll figure it out. So it's
been a lot of that. But I think too that
I was reflecting that I really think that culture is
more powerful than law. It's more powerful than law. There's
a lot of things that don't happen in the world

(01:07:45):
simply because it's socially unacceptable and not because there's some
law against it. I mean, I'm sure there is an
anti littering law, but that's not the reason why there's
not like people just throwing things out of their cars
when they're driving down the street. It's more of a
cultural and so to me, I'm like, the politics is
so overwhelming that I'm slightly more interested in doing small

(01:08:07):
things because I think that if the culture changes, that
it just rolls uphill.

Speaker 1 (01:08:15):
What small things do you think get the ball going talk.

Speaker 4 (01:08:18):
To your on house neighbors, to talk to your neighbors period,
you know, And it is kind of what you said
about you know, what are people gonna taken penitentiary chances? Yeah,
I mean, necessity is the mother of all invention, and
so I'm just trying to think small, like what can
I actually concretely do but also speak, you know, speak

(01:08:40):
authentically about these things. And you know, I have friends
all across the political spectrum, and I am gentle about it,
but I will say, like, this isn't morally right, this
isn't a good solution, this isn't meaningful policy, And I
think that there's a lot more good will out there.
I think a lot of the viciousness really thrives in

(01:09:02):
suspicions and disconnections of people you don't actually know. I
think it's it thrives on you know, the unknown to
some extent, not all of it. But I feel like
there's still more goodwill in the world than not. And
I'm just not sure how to tap it and move
it in the right direction. But I mean, we're clearly
on the precipice of something because you just can't take

(01:09:23):
the kind of economic conditions that exists in the United
States broadly, and the number of people that are needing
some form of qualifying for some form of supplemental assistance,
because that's the other thing that people that have never
like been on benefits don't know. It's like, oh, you
think you just get stuff because you study dirt poor dirt,

(01:09:45):
dirt dirt poor to qualify for most of this stuff,
and then it's still just not even supposed to be enough.
And you know, I mean, but I see all that
stuff too.

Speaker 1 (01:09:54):
And the irony of it is is if you do
get a halfway a foot back in the game, you
have to pay pay back. They don't tell you that,
like r you have to pay it back, right.

Speaker 4 (01:10:04):
And disabled people are caught in poverty traps, and like
one of them is like putting an asset limit on Medicaid.
So you want my people to get well and get
a job, but they can't save up money for a
car because they'll lose their health insurance. They can't save
up money because they'll lose their food stamps, they can't
save up money because they'll lose their housing. And so

(01:10:25):
it's like this very strange system that is so invested
in being punitive or attaching some kind of extremity to
the benefit that people can't even move out of it
because they're trapped. It's you know, they call it the
welfare cliff, right.

Speaker 1 (01:10:46):
Very true. So now that we've gotten that, I wanted
to touch base just on what have you been dealing
with because you were working with the state bills you
were mentioned earlier, what state bills that we should be
paying attention.

Speaker 4 (01:10:58):
To now, I mean, really, the I think the most
impactful stuff for disabled people is really what's in the
budget trailer bill. And for people that aren't familiar with
that process, Unfortunately, in May, the governor gets to revise
the budget, and this is a very accelerated process. It
really only gets introduced early May and passed by mid June.

(01:11:19):
So unfortunately that process has been used to make law
when it should really just be used to do budget adjustments.
So in California, it's kind of like grown into this
monster where you can have something like this asset limit
task returning to medical and virtually no time to respond.
That is a huge impact to disabled people because it

(01:11:40):
will kick people off the rolls and a lot of
disabled folks use in home supportive services to be able
to live in their homes and not in some kind
of care facility, and a lot of people are employed
as their families caretakers HSS workers. So we're looking at
some really big impacts to elderly and disabled people in
that budget trailer bill. Because the proposal isn't a one

(01:12:02):
time budget cut. It's California over a period don't quote week,
but I think about ten years progressively increased and then
got rid of this asset limit. So it went from
a couple of years ago it was one hundred and
thirty thousand dollars, then it went to zero, there was
no asset limit, and now it's going back to two
grand So people that don't know this and they have

(01:12:22):
accumulated too many assets and goodwill could lose their health
insurance and there's nothing else, right, like, there's nothing else.
This is straight medicaid. They can't go get Obamacare, they
don't qualify for it.

Speaker 1 (01:12:35):
This is it for them.

Speaker 4 (01:12:36):
So it's really catastrophic. So that's a big one that
hopefully there's so much opposition to it won't happen. Other bills,
it's kind of been the usual attempts to well unusual.
We're looking at just the same stuff right this wedding
of the treatment courts, civil treatment courts, so court ordered substance,

(01:12:59):
you ordered mental health treatment. That we're really getting very
closely married with the criminal laws, and especially after Grant's
pass right, because you can make any action associated with
being unhoused a crime, and then you can use that
crime either a diversion program or a threat of being
criminally prosecuted to move people into the civil treatment courts.

(01:13:21):
And part of the reason for that is that it
does kind of also move people into these state guardianships
where it's just control, right, state control like conservatorships. So
we've just seen loss of that right. Lots of people
still trying to implement Prop. Thirty six in a way
that's going to marry SUD treatment with the criminal courts,
increase the reasons and criteria for conservatorships or care court.

(01:13:46):
Some of these bills have died, but I think they
died because the state is having budgetary problems and anything
that costs money and is kind of not a mainstay
bill is likely to die this session. But that's mostly
you know, what I've been watching is the budget trailer
Bill SB three three one, which is one of these
ones that tries to expand again conservatorships and cycleds to

(01:14:11):
more and more people like people with dementia. I think
that's kind of the next wave, is that people that
really want to use civil treatment courts as a supposed
solution but really just a different vehicle besides the criminal
law to pick people up and move them. I think
that that is really starting to expand, well beyond even
mental illness and substance use disorders, because they're realizing so

(01:14:34):
many people on the streets are elderly, so I think
they're really looking at dementia and Alzheimer's and you know,
different organic TV traumatic brain injuries, different reasons that people
might be disabled and unhoused and on the streets. There's
trying to sweep it all into this same paradigm. There's

(01:14:55):
some resistance to that for sure.

Speaker 1 (01:14:58):
Well you point it out a very point two because
of the high rate of elderly on house and it's
very difficult, which I have been pushing in this conversation
to show, is that it's very hard for to say
that people don't want to work at at eighty years old,
who's going to be hiring. It's very hard for them
to saying that they like being outfare or they are
on substances and all of this kind of thing. When

(01:15:19):
you're seeing the population get older and much more frailer
and medically compromised, those statements, those stereotypes are not holding up.
But it takes people to have a keen eye of
seeing what's going on. But or are they willing to
look outside the stereotypes.

Speaker 4 (01:15:37):
Yes, And I will say I think that issues of disability,
issues of state guardianships, issues of public benefits are going
to become one of the hottest topics in the country
because of our aging population.

Speaker 1 (01:15:54):
And young population too.

Speaker 4 (01:15:55):
Young population too. But I mean, you're basically guaranteed to
fall into the category of disabled as you age, and
we've got seventy five million baby boomers that are going
to age into all of these types of medical frailty
or cognitive issues, you know, behavioral issues. I hate the word,

(01:16:16):
and it's going to get real, sus if we're not
cutting back on and being very careful about what's going
on with these involuntary treatment laws. Because this is the paradigm.
It's a state guardianship. It's taking your assets, it's taking
your driver's license. It's this mode of sort of care cops.

(01:16:37):
That's what the government likes. And you have to be
really careful with that stuff because, especially in the mental
health context and actually in the broader medical context, what
you're seeing is a lot of private equity or hedge
fund owned facilities. They're just buying up huge parts of
healthcare and you know, using it as a way to
make money. And if you don't want your grandma to

(01:16:59):
get monetize like a casino token and someone's horrifying, you know,
pay to play locked facility, you need to pay attention
to what's happening.

Speaker 1 (01:17:08):
Absolutely, Thank you so much to Claire for her time.
You can learn more about her in the description. Thank
you all for listening to another episode of Weedian House.
If you have a story you'd like to share, please
reached out to me at Wiedianhouse at gmail dot com

(01:17:29):
or at wiedian House on Instagram. Until then, may we
again meet in the light of understanding. Whedian House is
a production of iHeartRadio. It is written, hosted, and created
by me Theo Henderson, our producers Jamie Loftus, Hailey Fager,
Katie Fischel, and Lyra Smith. Our editor is Adam Want,

(01:17:53):
our engineer is Joel Jerome, and our local art is
also by Katie Fischer. Thank you for listening.