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b'March 31, 2022 \\u2014 Ukiah was rocked by two murders in six days, less than a half a mile apart. Both victims and both suspects were mentally ill, homeless, or both. \\nNow Redwood Quality Management Company, which oversees the county\\u2019s mental healthcare contracts, is planning a 16-bed Medi-Cal certified mental health rehabilitation center for the acutely mentally ill, a block from the critical residential treatment facility, which is fully built but not yet serving clients.\\nCamille Schraeder, the Chief Programs Officer for RQMC, thinks the Medi-Cal funded center, which she hopes to open in late 2024, will free up more money that the county can use for other mental healthcare services. \\nThat\\u2019s because the county uses state realignment funds as a 40% match for Medi-Cal payments. So if patients are sent to facilities that are not Medi-Cal certified, the county has to pay the whole cost with realignment money. Schraeder reasons that if patients go to a facility that is Medi-Cal certified, the county will save 60% of its realignment allocation.\\nShe\\u2019s applied for a state grant she hopes will cover some of the construction costs. She says she\\u2019s building from scratch for a few reasons.\\n\\u201cAn MHRC (mental health rehabilitation center) is a 16-bed residential treatment facility that has intensive nursing and psychiatry. That\\u2019s what it has,\\u201d she explained. \\u201cWe wanted it to be co-located with the medication, psychiatry, and therapy outpatient clinic as well as intensive substance abuse. So first and foremost, we need to have it do both. The clinic, and the MHRC. Secondly, we didn\\u2019t want to do what has previously been highly criticized in our community, which is to put something that is that intensive, with 16 mentally ill clients, on State Street.\\u201d\\nIn the meantime, the county psychiatric health facility, the critical residential treatment center, the rehabilitation center, and the new jail for mentally ill inmates are all in some stage of preparation, though none is available yet. They are all in Ukiah, which is in Supervisor Maureen Mulheren\\u2019s district. She listed four teams of outreach workers striving to engage mentally ill homeless people. She also pointed to the county\\u2019s success in getting people off the streets and into assisted living in Live Oak apartments, the former Best Western hotel, where residents receive a wide variety of social services. But she described an impasse. In spite of what she described as the county and its partners doing \\u201can incredible job\\u201d of providing services to people who are ready, she said, \\u201cWe have people on the streets that are not ready to accept services. And one of the biggest challenges is of course the laws in California. It\\u2019s not illegal to be homeless. It\\u2019s certainly not illegal to have mental health issues. But there\\u2019s not an opportunity then to get people into the services that might help them get out of their situation and off of the streets.\\u201d\\nSchraeder thinks the proposed rehabilitation center could be part of the solution \\u2014though housing and staff are key components that will have to come together, too. She foresees referrals from the critical residential treatment facility, where people would stay for short-term crises. But she believes some others may be candidates for a temporary conservatorship \\u2014 or court-ordered treatment, if Newsom\\u2019s proposal for CARE courts meets with the approval of the Legislature.\\n\\u201cThey really need longer term treatment to address their mental health disorder or their intensive substance abuse disorder,\\u201d she began, describing what she sees as potential clients for the rehabilitation center. \\u201cAt that point, they would ask for a temporary conservatorship\\u2026once they were conserved, the public guardian would consider placing them at Anchor Health Rehab Center,\\u201d where residents would receive intensive case management, psychiatry, and board and care supervision. \\u201cEngagement is the piece,\\u201d she declared. Referring to the stabbing in the parking lot near the county\\u2019s Social Services building and Wells Fargo bank in Ukiah, she said, \\u201cClearly everybody must have been trying to engage, must have been trying to get (the suspect) into care, and in America, you have free will.\\u201d\\nIf the Governor\\u2019s CARE courts proposal becomes law, local courts will be able to compel people who are severely mentally ill into treatment plans. It builds on Newsom\\u2019s $12 billion housing investments, but oversight, court costs, and other elements will need new state funding. The laist reported that the ACLU has raised concerns about the possibility of civil rights violations if people are forced into treatment. Mulheren has some local historical context.\\n\\u201cI was just a child when the facility in Talmage was closed,\\u201d she recalled, referencing the Mendocino State Asylum for the Insane, now the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas. \\u201cI hear a lot of people talking about this pendulum that has swung, especially in the state of California, where we were housing vulnerable individuals, we were not treating them humanely, and we took this initiative where people should not be forced to live in conditions such as that. And they were released and the funding was set aside and used for other things, and I think that what we see as a state, certainly what Governor Newsom has recognized, is that the people that we have the most safety concerns about are not left to the streets. I think it\\u2019s time for the pendulum to swing back.\\u201d\\nOne thing is sure, Mulheren concluded: \\u201cThe way that we have been doing things is not working. So we really need to figure out how we work together. How we shift.\\u201d'