‘Defunding’ the police could reframe homelessness crisis
There’s a big difference being approached on the street by an officer or by a social worker
It took 10 years of bouncing among couches, his car, a shelter and the streets before the system steered R.J. Ramsey into what he needed: a permanent place to stay.
Ramsey had plenty of contact with San Jose and Santa Clara County government before then, but it was always with law enforcement. Instead of helping him find housing, he said, officers were constantly shooing him out of wherever he’d camped for the night, or stopping him on the street to search him.
“Most of them talk down to you,” 53-year-old Ramsey said. “The first thing they ask you is not your name, but automatically assume you’ve been to jail before, so they ask you for your PFN — your personal number that they assign you in jail.”
Now, he can’t help but wonder how his life might have been different if just once, years earlier, a social worker had ap
proached him on the street, instead of a police officer.
That question is being amplified as cries to “defund the police” sweep the nation — spurred by widespread outrage over recent police killings of Black men and women. In a move that could revolutionize how local cities police their unhoused residents, officials in San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley have cut or promised to cut their police budgets and divert those funds to social programs. Some of that money will be used to shift certain calls involving unhoused residents, people who are intoxicated or those suffering a mental health crisis away from law enforcement.
“This is a huge departure from how not just San Francisco, but cities across the country have responded to homelessness for the past three decades,” said Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director of the San Francisco-based Coalition on Homelessness. “That’s going to take a lot to move out of, but I think it’s more possible now than ever.”
Ramsey, like many unhoused people, was constantly in and out of jail and living situations — including a short-lived stint in an apartment in 2017. He was arrested nearly three dozen times, mostly for things experts say are common side effects of life on the street — including trespassing and drug possession — and for fights with his girlfriend that sometimes turned physical, often a result of their stressful housing situation. But all that ended when he finally met a social worker in 2018, after landing in the hospital with a head injury. He and his girlfriend, now his wife, were matched with an apartment and supportive services in San Jose’s Second Street Studios.
It’s that outcome cities hope to replicate by taking money from police budgets to fund innovative civilian teams trained to respond to people in crisis on the streets.
Oakland has cut police funds by $14.3 million — about 5% of the department’s budget. The City Council also voted to fund the Mobile Assistance Community Responders of Oakland, or MACRO — an unprecedented pilot program that would use trained community members to handle calls related to mental health and homelessness, instead of police.
In Berkeley, the City Council followed suit, slashing $9.25 million from its police budget — a 12% cut — and voting to try out a new Specialized Care Unit that would deploy crisis workers, not cops, to noncriminal calls. About 40% of the city’s 911 calls involve an unhoused resident or someone experiencing a mental health crisis, Mayor Jesse Arreguín wrote in a recent op-ed.
Both cities are weighing cutting their police budgets even more — possibly by as much as 50%.
San Francisco Mayor London Breed also has committed to redirecting some police funds, though an amount hasn’t been finalized, and diverting nonviolent calls away from police. In 2018, police were dispatched to an average of 7,623 homelessness-related calls per month, according to a report by UC Berkeley sociologist Chris Herring.
San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo so far has rebuffed demands to cut police funding. But he recently unveiled a police-reform plan that will explore how the department can use civilians to respond to noncriminal calls.
Proponents of the mounting sea change argue police shouldn’t be the ones to respond when a neighbor complains of a tent blocking the sidewalk, or someone passed out on the street or wandering through traffic. They argue an unarmed social worker or mental health professional is less likely to escalate the situation and is better equipped to figure out and provide what the person needs — whether it’s medication, food and water, or shelter. Rerouting those calls also could free up law enforcement to respond to more urgent situations.
Demands for massive police funding cuts have been controversial. Tom Saggau, spokesman for the San Jose Police Officers’ Association, called them “reckless” and “dangerous.”
But many law enforcement agencies would be happy to leave the task of checking in on unhoused communities to someone else.
“As it is now, every problem, every neighborhood concern, every emergency, no matter what it is, gets dumped into the laps of police officers,” Saggau said. “And it’s really unfair, both to those responding to these calls, but also to the folks on the receiving end as well. Because our folks are not social workers. They’re not mental health professionals.”
While they may try to refer a person in crisis to social services, police generally have two options — make an arrest, or temporarily commit the person to a psychiatric facility.
Still, even supporters of the reform movement caution that without dramatic investments in affordable housing, temporary shelters and mental health care, shifting who responds won’t make a long-term dent in the region’s homelessness crisis. Nearly 30,000 people were homeless in the fivecounty Bay Area last year. “We need to actually start addressing the problem. … We can’t just replace police with social workers in the end. It’s got to be social workers, plus,” said Alex Vitale, author of “The End of Policing” and a sociology professor at Brooklyn College.
In their reform efforts, Oakland, Berkeley and San Francisco are taking a page from a program established 30 years ago in Eugene, Oregon. Crisis Assistance Helping Out On The Streets, or CAHOOTS, dispatches a medic and a crisis worker to nonviolent behavioral health calls, saving the city an estimated $8.5 million per year in public safety spending. CAHOOTS workers requested police backup on fewer than 1% of calls last year, and more than 60% of the program’s clients are homeless.
By funding MACRO to the initial tune of $1.85 million, Oakland becomes the first major U.S. city to institute a similar program. But who will respond to calls and how they will be trained remain up in the air.
That uncertainty is what worries Sgt. Ray Kelly, public information officer for the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office, where he estimates deputies spend 25% of their time responding to calls related to homelessness, mental health and addiction.
Would civilian responders wear body cameras? And what happens if a call becomes violent?
“If the mental health world wants to come in and take this giant load off our plate, please do it,” Kelly said. “And if they can do it in a way that’s better, safer and more efficient, then yes, let’s do it. But show me the proof of that.”