President's EO on homelessness sparks mixed reaction

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. — On Friday, President Trump signed an Executive Order addressing homelessness, specifically those experiencing homelessness while also fighting addiction or mental illness.

According to the White House, the order "directs the Attorney General to reverse judicial precedents and end consent decrees that limit State and local governments’ ability to commit individuals on the streets who are a risk to themselves or others., requires the Attorney General to work with the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and the Secretary of Transportation to prioritize grants for states and municipalities that enforce prohibitions on open illicit drug use, urban camping and loitering, and urban squatting, and track the location of sex offenders, redirects funding to ensure that individuals camping on streets and causing public disorder and that are suffering from serious mental illness or addiction are moved into treatment centers, assisted outpatient treatment, or other facilities, ensures discretionary grants for substance use disorder prevention, treatment, and recovery do not fund drug injection sites or illicit drug use, and stops sex offenders who receive homelessness assistance from being housed with children, and allows programs to exclusively house women and children."

Ozarks First is taking a look at the third part of that order, that would provide funding to make sure homeless individuals dealing with a mental illness or addiction, 'are moved into treatment centers, assisted outpatient treatment, or other facilities.'

Greene County Sheriff Jim Arnott says the order is a step in the right direction.

"I think I think it's fantastic. Finally, Washington, D.C. has noticed that there is a nationwide problem with homelessness and then tied with that mentally ill and, and the crimes that are being committed and have made it a priority," Greene County Sheriff Jim Arnott said. "It actually provides assistance to locals with federal money to put people in in care and what we lack in the United States is places for homeless to be able to go because all mental health type beds are private pay, and so there is no funding to put people that have severe mental health problems in a place that they can function. Jail is not the place for those people. If they haven't committed a crime, they need to go to a place that they can stay and they can function."

Despite Arnott's excitement, there are still some unknowns about how much funding cities or states would get, what kind of facilities could the funding create, or even how long it would take to create a new facility with government dollars.

"We'll wait to see what that funding looks like. This just came out last week, so we have no idea what those grants and what that's going to look like and how that funding is going to work," Arnott said. "When I started as a deputy sheriff, there were state-run hospitals that you can take people that obviously have mental problems that can't function and they have no family or the family has shut them out and there's no place for them to go. Once those state run hospitals closed down, the place that they ended up as jails all across the United States. I mean, Missouri is not the only one. When that happens, there's no place for these people to go except for when they're not on their medication or they're not getting help. They commit crimes, and when they commit crimes, then they end up in jail, and it's just a revolving door of that, and it's not the place for them. They need some long-term assistance."

Becky S. is currently homeless.

She says her and her family were living in a home, taking care of a woman, but when a family member moved in to take over the care, Becky and others had to move out.

"I'm currently homeless, living in my van and tent between the two of them. I've been this way for almost two years now. This wasn't on purpose. I've had a voucher for almost three months now, trying to get a house. Just can't find one."

She's also on medication for a mental illness, and is trying to balance a litany of tasks as she progresses back into a home.

"I waited from October to just recently to get back on my mental health meds because there were no psychiatrists," Becky said. "I'm on my mental health meds. I've got I'm not doing drugs. I've got a job."

However, with everything going on, Becky says she has concerns that while being homeless, if she were to have a lapse in medication, someone could determine she can't take care of herself and place her in a facility, away from her family.

"That's my biggest fear. I've already been through that once. I don't want to go through it again. I'm doing the right thing," Becky said. "I'm upset. I go to work, I take care of my dogs. I'm not out here doing drugs, committing crimes. I just need somewhere to stay. I try to do everything by the law but there's just you can't do everything out here by the law when you're homeless, you have to have somewhere to sleep. You can't stay awake 24/7. You can't, especially when you're clean and sober trying to not get in trouble. It's seems like everywhere you turn there's trouble."

Katrin Herd is an advocate for those going through situations like Becky's and thinks the idea has good intentions on a surface level, but the unknowns have her on edge and worried about the potential negative impacts.

"It kind of puts us in a state of panic, a state of panic, concern for our unsheltered community and also for our service providers. A lot of budgets have already been cut. So, of course, you know, putting the label on it like we we're going to put everybody in drug rehabilitation, We're going to put people that are mentally ill and, you know, get them in mental hospitals where they're receiving the services they need, that sounds great on the surface, except where are those places? We historically have always encouraged our unsheltered community that we're working with that are struggling with addiction or things like that to get help, but the waiting list and the limited beds in sober living and the cost of beds to go to sober living and the stipulations to get into some of them, some of them require, you know, religious participation," Herd said. "Those kinds of things are you know, they are debilitating to someone who says wakes up today and says, 'today's the day I want to quit', and we can't get them in anywhere. The same with mental illness."

There's also concerns from some groups that the executive order will bring back mental institutions from decades ago.

"I'm confused as to when they say we're going to put people in these places. How are they going to do that? How are they making the decision that it is okay? Hopefully we're not going to go back to way back in history where we just picked people up and shove them, lock them away and dehumanize them and, you know, psych wards for forever."

Arnott says he's hopeful the funding can address an issue he says has progressively increased over the years.

"There's movement of homelessness more to center city [of Springfield] than it has, you know, years past. It was right on the outskirts or right inside the city, now we see it all moving towards center city. We have people that are in center Springfield that call us for help and we go work on those cases. I've seen, I think, a definitely a dramatic decrease in trespassing on private property because we enforce it, and I think word has got out that, you know, you can't just go stay on somebody's backyard or go on private property because you'll get arrested. I think that has helped, but if you travel downtown, you see a lot of homelessness. You see a lot of people, you know, they're obviously set up camps, different places," Arnott said. "It would be so good to have an avenue for the other people that have mental health needs or just can't move forward because they need a little bit of help, not jail, and there's this direction that the president is taking."

"I think that the idea of having more of these facilities, we would love to have a better mental health system," Herd said. "We would love to have those services provided to our unsheltered community or any of us right away, but it just doesn't work like that. So I think that on the surface, the idea of those things is good, but those need to be here and now first, because where do they go if we don't have those options available now and they go start picking up someone tomorrow or the next day, where do they go? I mean, is their magically going to appear in a mental hospital and or are they going to put them in jail? What happens when they're done? What happens when they get out of this drug rehab or whatever? Where are they going then? Back on the streets, because we still don't have the housing."

"Some of us out here really are trying to get our lives back together, and we just still can't," Becky said.