My son died on a Sacramento street. Gavin Newsom’s CARE Court wouldn’t have saved him

My son Tony died last year on a Sacramento street. He had battled schizoaffective disorder from a young age, and my husband and I had worked tirelessly to keep him housed, on medication and off the street.

For about five years near the end of his life, Tony was the most stable he had been since his diagnosis. He was living in a halfway house for the mentally ill, which provided consistency and accountability.

But Tony was kicked out of that house when his birth mother, whom he hadn’t seen in over a decade, died and left him a $5,000 inheritance. Apparently, that meant he had too much money to remain in the home.

To no avail, we begged his caseworker to find a way to avoid giving the money directly to Tony, who couldn’t even understand how much money it was; he believed he’d use his “millions” to buy a home.

After Tony spent the money in a matter of days, he became homeless and unmedicated. He fell into a spiral that led to jail. Three days after his release from jail, Tony was dead. He died where he had been living, on the street.

It’s overwhelming to think of all the ways the medical and justice systems failed my son, but one thing is very clear to me: He would still be alive if he had remained housed.

When Tony first got sick, I called agency after agency. I was on the phone for hours trying to get him help. We tried to keep him at home, but it became too dangerous. We were all suffering, and we needed help.

In each call, I was told the same thing: “Drop him off at the emergency room; let them handle it.” So he would go to the hospital for a couple of weeks of treatment, and then they would discharge him and he would disappear for months — back to living on the street, where he was unable to purchase, let alone keep track of, much-needed medications.

Sometimes, when it was cold outside, Tony committed crimes so he could go to jail for a few months just to get fed and medicated and have a warm place to stay.

A court finally appointed an overworked caseworker to him, at which point Tony entered the halfway house program. For the first time, the cycle of emergency rooms, jail and homelessness was broken, and he was stable.

That lasted nearly five years, until his caseworker called to say that Tony was getting kicked out of the house because of the inheritance and that there was no way around it. We all knew where it would lead, but Tony was kicked out anyway.

I don’t know why the system works the way it does. It doesn’t make sense that someone who had lived on the street, in and out of jail and battling schizoaffective disorder, would be kicked out of the home where he found stability. It doesn’t make sense that someone in a situation like Tony’s can receive a lump-sum $5,000 payment when it could have been managed by a caseworker or family members to cover his living expenses. It’s hard to fathom that such dysfunction caused the eventual death of our son.

Gov. Gavin Newsom has proposed a new CARE (Community Assistance, Recovery and Empowerment) Court system to help people like Tony, but from what I can tell, it does not address the fundamental issue: the need for stable, long-term housing.

Establishing enough suitable housing for everyone who needs it would be expensive. But with so many Californians naming homelessness as a major concern, it should be a top spending priority. I understand what the governor and state leaders are trying to do with CARE Court, but based on our experience, it won’t change anything unless people are permanently housed with the resources necessary to keep them that way.

Stable housing is not optional, especially for people with severe mental challenges. Unless the plan is for people with mental health issues to continue living on the street, going to jail or occupying overburdened emergency rooms, we need to address this fundamental problem. No new court structure meant to help people like my son can be successful if it doesn’t assure housing and assistance for as long as people need. And schizophrenia, for example, lasts a lifetime.

Tony should be alive today. He could have stayed stable and healthy in supportive housing for the rest of his life. I hope state leaders understand that as they make decisions about how to address homelessness and mental health. Funding to house and help people like Tony cannot be temporary. Housing is a foundational need.