REPORT: Over a quarter of Butte County's 1,006 homeless are "severely mentally ill"

CHICO, Calif. — A new draft report is providing a clearer picture of how many people in Butte County are considered homeless, revealing a significant percentage of this population as being severely mentally ill.

It comes through the Butte County Homeless Continuum of Care (CoC). A point-in-time draft report presented at its May 16 meeting shows that the planning body counted 1,006 people living in an emergency shelter, transitional housing or on the street on Jan. 26.

This represents a nearly 13% increase from the previous count in 2019 where CoC reported 891 people living in these conditions, or 115 more.

A CoC representative tells KRCR that this total is expected to increase in the official report that will be presented on June 13. This draft report is required to be submitted to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development under its definition of “homelessness,” which CoC says does not include such situations as living on a friend's couch as the planning body would. How much it is expected to increase under CoC's definition of homeless is unclear at this time.

The draft report lightly details subpopulations and demographics for the county’s homeless, including age, ethnicity, gender and household description. Perhaps most shockingly, it reports that 257 people, or over 25% of the total population counted, are considered “severely mentally ill.”

The Butte County Behavioral Health Department (BCBH) and its director, Scott Kennelly, outreach to this specific population to connect them to treatment, seemingly more often now as the amount of severely mentally ill homeless individuals increases.

“Sometimes they believe they truly have the FBI following them, that the voices that they hear are real, or the paranoia that something bad is going to happen if they talk to us is real,” says Kennelly outside the BCBH administrative offices Friday. “It’s about building that relationship with that person and eventually trying to get them voluntarily into services because we don’t like to involuntarily hospitalize anyone, and it only happens in the most extreme circumstances.”

But mental incapacities are not the only hurdles standing in between treatment and this population, which he says dies 20 years earlier than the general population on average.

Kennelly has previously elaborated on a lacking willingness of landlords to rent to BCBH programs that house this population. Additionally, current law limits when California behavioral health officials can involuntarily submit the most severely mentally ill to treatment.

“What can you do to actually address the problem?" asks KRCR.

“There's a couple of levels of things that we're doing. We're working on increasing the amount of homeless housing services. There are several projects coming online. We're actually having low-income apartment complexes that are dedicated to our population, severe mental illness. We're also looking at legislative reform,” responds Kennelly. “AB 2020 would change the LPS law around for hospitalization. Most recently, Governor Newsom has introduced his CARE Court proposal to try and get those people earlier in the process and get them to help before they end up with negative outcomes.”

Kennelly adds that the amount of those in this most recent point-in-time count that is reported severely mentally ill is “grossly under representative.” CoC themselves acknowledge that these numbers will likely change when the official report is presented in three weeks.

--

To report errors or issues with this article please email the editorial team.