The mentality ill, like most other marginalized and thus vulnerable populations, were among the first to lose their support networks and homes when Covid crashed the economy.
To this day, the funding and those facilities have not been restored to pre-Reagan levels and mentally ill people make up as many as a third of the homeless people sleeping on the streets.
There are some good steps being taken but they're not widely known.
The Biden administration has rolled out a program to get illegal guns off our streets in an effort to reduce the current wave of gun-based crime and murders. And they're talking about cracking down on white-collar crime, hoping to eliminate the justification for everyday thieves that "rich people get away with stealing every day, so why's it a big deal when I steal from them?"
But effective and highly visible action is needed now to keep Americans safe in their homes and on our streets. And it has to be real and meaningful action, not just symbolic steps or over-reactive and gratuitously punitive stunts like the crime bills of the 1990s.
Democrats need to step up with big, significant and effective anti-crime programs now, or the GOP will eat their lunch next year. Americans deserve to be safe in their communities.
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