In Fort Dodge, Iowa on Saturday, Gov. Ron DeSantis was consumed with the unhoused population half a continent away.
Telling a story about an “student housing” apartment complex owner in Berkeley, California who was required to provide “floors for homeless” and the troubles it purportedly created, the 2024 Republican presidential candidate said they’d be better off locked up than out in the world.
“So you have 18-year-old college freshmen, these girls going to their apartment and you have homeless that are like harassing them,” DeSantis said. “And so that shows you that the liberal approach to it, that’s just going to get you more homeless.”
Not bothering to square the contradiction between having apartments and being “homeless,” the Governor went on to give his policy advice.
“I 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.”
DeSantis framed the anecdote and his conclusion amid an explication of long-term federal policy failure.
“And then the other thing the federal government’s done over many decades is they’ve really pushed away from having anybody be institutionalized. And look, I’m 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’s, it’s dropped dramatically and you almost see the inverse of things like homelessness and crime on the streets as a result,” said the Governor, who has recently extolled Florida’s “50 year low” crime levels.
Ironically, the Governor who has invoked former President Ronald Reagan and his “shining city on the hill” image is taking aim at a policy of the California Republican’s that broke with his immediate predecessor in the White House.
Reagan repealed legislation championed by Jimmy Carter that supported mental health institutions.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 “chronically mentally ill.” It arose from work during Carter’s single term, via a presidential commission on mental health.
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.
DeSantis has criticized the phasing out of mental institutions before on the trail, including during another stop in Iowa back in August.
“So many people, we used to have more of an institutional process where people would be institutionalized, who couldn’t function in society,” DeSantis said.
“We deinstitutionalized some 30 or 40 years ago. You know, I’m 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’re doing drugs or doing all this, but their mental health is ultimately the root of this. It’s behavior, it’s not that there’s not enough jobs or anything like that.”
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