A Mental Health Milestone Points Out Need

With the dedication of Villa Calleguas this month, the mental health community celebrated a milestone in the effort to meet the housing needs of the mentally ill in Ventura County.

The Villa Calleguas complex in Camarillo provides 23 new one-bedroom apartments for the mentally ill. The Ventura County Behavioral Health Department provides the necessary support services on-site to help residents live as independently as possible. This type of living arrangement represents a vital midpoint in the continuum of care for the mentally ill, offering a living situation less restrictive than a hospital but more protective than a mainstream social environment.

Villa Calleguas was sponsored by Partners in Housing, a nonprofit public benefit corporation providing low-income housing to people with special needs. The Area Housing Authority of Ventura County manages it. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Ventura County HOME Investment Partnership financed construction.

To be eligible to live at Villa Calleguas, residents must have significant psychiatric disabilities and also meet the low-income standards typical of HUD housing programs, unfortunately an all-too-common combination of circumstances.

One of the great challenges facing individuals afflicted with serious mental illness is regaining the ability to maintain productive and enriching social relationships, an absolutely essential precondition in most cases for gainful employment. Of course, the supportive services provided in an environment such as Villa Calleguas’ are designed specifically to help residents regain social skills and functional competence. Thus, it is not just a place of ongoing treatment. It is a place of rehabilitation, education, job training and personal growth.

Although we proudly celebrate the achievement of this major milestone in the development of more adequate supported housing options for the mentally ill, so far for the year closure of another facility has caused Ventura County to actually experience a net decrease in housing units available for this tremendously disadvantaged population. Moreover, the future will be increasingly difficult as housing costs increase due to land-use decisions and the restrictions of Save Open Space and Agricultural Resources (SOAR) measures and the funds available to the county become progressively reduced by restrictions such as Proposition 172 and Community Memorial Hospital’s proposal to divert public funds to private hospitals to pay their bad debts through Measure O.

In its most recent housing analysis for the mentally ill, the Department of Behavioral Health found extreme deficiencies in supply compared to need or demand. Its report showed that there were literally no vacancies in board and care facilities for the mentally ill in all of Ventura County and no vacancies in the semi-independent living facilities. There were only nine beds available in room and board facilities without medical or social support services, but most chronically mentally ill patients could not be expected to do well in such facilities because medication or support are essential for their rehabilitation.

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At the same time, 453 people with severe and persistent mental illness were being served in the emergency shelter program and 142 more by other short-term shelter programs throughout the county. These figures do not include the 400 adult patients still living with their parents in the county, the 1,246 living in “doubled up” housing situations without the dignity and privacy to which they are entitled, the 547 living in circumstances they consider are substandard (and most are), or the estimated 600 to 750 homeless mentally ill who choose not to engage at all with the county mental health system.

Even more disturbing is the fact that most people familiar with the mental health system believe these figures gravely underestimate the real demand.

In the absence of alternative housing resources, taxpayers pay many times more for institutional care for this population than it might otherwise cost. An estimated 150 patient admissions to the county psychiatric inpatient unit, at a cost to taxpayers of $900,000 to $1.5 million, could have been avoided entirely if alternative housing had been available last year, and hospital stays for 75 patients could have been significantly shortened at a savings of $600 to $1,000 per day.

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Thirteen percent or more of our jail population is estimated to have a mental illness and to be in jail primarily as a result of that illness. The financial burden of incarcerating them could be dramatically reduced if a mere fraction of that cost were invested in the mental health system and alternative housing.

The bottom line is that we have good reason to celebrate the dedication of Villa Calleguas. It will serve the mentally ill well and is a significant step forward in the battle to resolve the huge dilemma facing Ventura County in meeting the needs of the mentally ill. It will be a wonderful model for similar projects and partnerships. It will help illustrate better ways to support the recovery and rehabilitation of the mentally ill. We have many miles yet to walk on this difficult road, and we have many needs yet to be met.