My young adult son with a severe mental illness cycled through homeless episodes before he died, so I read with frustration the article “A landmark case changed how cities deal with homeless encampments” [Oct. 15, A1].

Western cities are stuck in crisis management, not cause analysis or long-term solution building. To fix this issue, we need a compassionate and fully functional treatment system for people with severe mental illness, and we need governments to stop not-in-my-backyard neighborhoods from blocking development of treatment facilities and affordable, supportive housing.

I know many families whose loved ones become homeless because treatment access requires violence. Please trust me that no family or landlord can do what professionals struggle to do when a person is persistently psychotic and too sick to recognize that they have a mental illness. I’m working with several families now with loved ones about to become homeless because of unsafe psychotic behaviors in their home and a mental health system that won’t move them into care until someone gets hurt.

They will join the homeless multitudes bumped from one encampment to another, unwell, disturbing public safety, and heading toward early death. 

Jerri Clark, Vancouver, founder of Mothers of the Mentally Ill