Even as county mental health officials herald an ambitious new plan to spend sales tax money to expand housing for people with mental illness, they’ve quietly let the boarding homes close because they no longer fit the preferred model, which emphasizes independent living.
In a memo to the buildings’ owner last month, mental health director Amnon Shoenfeld said the county didn’t want to invest in repairing the debilitated boarding homes because they weren’t consistent with its “recovery principles.” Recovery refers to a philosophy that people with mental illness can and do improve with appropriate treatment, housing and support.
Meanwhile, waiting lists for mental health housing in King County — and around the state — continue to grow.
Plymouth Housing Group, one of the largest providers of such housing, has 800 people on its list and a two-year wait, said Tara Connor, Plymouth’s policy director.
The lack of housing has created backups at Western State Hospital, where more than 100 patients are cleared for discharge but have nowhere to go.
The problem is even more acute for those not leaving a psychiatric facility. Western State patients have priority for community housing. Others may have to wait months to years for supported housing, said Robert Fors, a probation officer with Seattle’s mental health court.
I’ve worked at both Western State Hospital and within the District Mental Health Court of King County. During the past three years, I got first-hand experience with these difficulties while working as a social worker in these systems. During this same time as the counties scramble for funding for serving their clients locally, this funding was siphoned off of Western State Hospital, and wards have been closed, eliminating some of the capacity. Within the King County system, we were promised earlier this year that we were going to see an increase in funding that would help pick up the slack. We saw the start up of the PACT teams (Program for Assertive Community Treatment) which were understaffed and overburdened within the first 6 months, and in my personal experience, some members of the teams were counter productive in their goal of supporting client independence and self-sufficiency.