![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/Fort-Dodge-Iowa-on-Saturday-Gov.-Ron-DeSantis.webp?resize=1015%2C571&ssl=1\")
<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nTelling a story about a \u201cstudent housing\u201d apartment complex owner in Berkeley, California who was required to provide \u201cfloors for homeless\u201d and the troubles it purportedly created, the 2024 Republican presidential candidate said they\u2019d be better off locked up than out in the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSo you have 18-year-old college freshmen, these girls going to their apartment and you have homeless that are like harassing them,\u201d DeSantis said. \u201cAnd so that shows you that the liberal approach to it, that\u2019s just going to get you more homeless.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Not bothering to square the contradiction between having apartments and being \u201chomeless,\u201d the Governor went on to give his policy advice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI do think some of these folks would benefit from being in an institutional setting and I think the public as a whole would be safer as a result of them being in an institutional setting.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
DeSantis framed the anecdote and his conclusion amid an explication of long-term federal policy failure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAnd then the other thing the federal government\u2019s done over many decades is they\u2019ve really pushed away from having anybody be institutionalized. And look, I\u2019m not saying everyone should be. But if you go back 50-60 years and look at the number of people that were in institutional settings versus now it\u2019s, it\u2019s dropped dramatically and you almost see the inverse of things like homelessness and crime on the streets as a result,\u201d said the Governor, who has recently extolled Florida\u2019s \u201c50 year low\u201d crime levels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ironically, the Governor who has invoked former President Ronald Reagan and his \u201cshining city on the hill\u201d image is taking aim at a policy of the California Republican\u2019s that broke with his immediate predecessor in the White House.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Reagan repealed legislation championed by Jimmy Carter that supported mental health institutions. The Mental Health Systems Act authorized grants to public and nonprofit private community mental health centers for operational costs, with an eye toward helping the \u201cchronically mentally ill.\u201d It arose from work during Carter\u2019s single term, via a presidential commission on mental health.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Reagan instead provided block grants to the states at reduced levels, amounting to 75% to 80% of what they would have gotten under the Carter framework.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
DeSantis has criticized the phasing out of mental institutions before on the trail, including during another stop in Iowa back in August.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSo many people, we used to have more of an institutional process where people would be institutionalized, who couldn\u2019t function in society,\u201d DeSantis said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe deinstitutionalized some 30 or 40 years ago. You know, I\u2019m not sure that that was the right thing to do. I see all these homeless in Los Angeles and San Francisco and some of these other liberal cities, they\u2019re doing drugs or doing all this, but their mental health is ultimately the root of this. It\u2019s behavior, it\u2019s not that there\u2019s not enough jobs or anything like that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In Fort Dodge, Iowa on Saturday, Gov. Ron DeSantis was consumed with the unhoused population half a continent away. Telling a story about a \u201cstudent housing\u201d apartment complex owner in Berkeley, California… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":40174,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"0","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[15],"tags":[7056],"class_list":["post-40173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-ron-desantis-sees-mental-institutions-as-a-solution-to-homelessness"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40173\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}