Yes. I am absolutely posting multiple times today hoping to engage people with my Go Fund Me. Autistic people and the streets don’t mix. More on that later.

But here are my suggestions for a functional Bellingham.

Mental health services and legal services should always be provided in tandem.

The news cycle is filled with endless examples of people suffering mental health crises running into trouble with the courts. And those are extreme examples! People going crazy and hacking at other people with axes, burning down hamburger stands. Imagine how many people with mental health problems have run-of-the-mill legal issues like evictions, collections… that sort of thing.

You can’t treat a mental illness without treating the problems that cause it. Consider a man with a nail through his hand and the medical response is to put salve on the wound and dress it. REMOVE THE NAIL or the wound won’t close.

There are two basic types of mental illnesses: thought disorders and anxiety disorders. Thought disorders are things like schizophrenia. Anxiety disorders are pretty much everything else: OCD, Depression, Bi-polar disorder, all of these are anxiety disorders. How can anyone think sticking a pill down the throat of someone with bipolar disorder facing financial ruin will solve anything?

Mental health problems cause instability, and that frequently brushes up against the law. And yet for decades mental health clinics just tell clients to acquire legal services separately and under their own steam. Because yeah… that guy the landlord wants to kick out because he won’t stop screaming about the Mormons poisoning his toothbrush will be totally fine if you up his seroquel.

Mental health problems and legal troubles often go hand in hand. Without helping the whole person, the wound continues to fester.

Community Mental Health Clinics Must Be Required to Service All Federal Disabilities

As it stands, you can only get mental health services in Whatcom County if you are Medicaid recipient. This means you are probably on SSI, which is the federal safety net program for people who didn’t work or weren’t ever able to. Medicare is what SSDI recipients get (typically). We can also qualify for Medicaid, but there is what is called a “spend down.”

The “spend down” is the amount of money a Medicaid-qualified person must spend out of their own pocket on health care expenses before they get a Medicaid certificate. The spend down period resets ever six months.

My spend down in $3200. That means I would have to spend $3200 from my disability check on medical expenses BEFORE I could get Medicaid to pay for anything. And that’s every six months. So, let’s say I spend $3200 between January and June. That means I can get Medicaid to pay for services from June to December. That means I could get mental health services… from June to December.

But what haven’t I done from June to December? Meet my spend down. So the next January I am OUT of those services that required Medicaid, and am forced to pay for my medical expenses out of pocket – not even using my Medicare to pay for them – so that I can qualify to re-apply for those services in June again.

This. Is. STUPID.

Community mental health services should be extended to all those with a federally recognized disability that involves mental health. Turning people away and then welcoming them back to start anew ever six months leads to instability, relapse, and mistrust. Knowing you’ll be “out on your own” for the next six months leads to decompensation.

Ask the mental health experts who put us through it. They know what they’re doing. They’re simply at the whim of the administrators and the bean counters.

Drugs Or Not

Bellingham has to decide whether drug possession and use (excuse me… “the right of the homeless to self-medicate”) are kosher in the city or not. If not, well, you have your work cut out for you. You can’t hold a parking lot secure, so good luck. But if yes, then stop tying benefits to being drug free. That means DON’T MAKE DRUG ADDICTS CHOOSE BETWEEN SELF-MEDICATION AND HOUSING.

No one (well, except that one chick with the skateboard and the former camp on the edge of the WTA parking lot) thrives on instability and sleeping in a clearing next to the trail. (Seriously. She knows who she is. She has her shit handled.)

Don’t make someone living on the edge of society to choose between housing with TONS of strings attached and maintaining their own status quo, living in the bushes and shooting up (or whatever) in the bathroom.

That means no federal funding for housing, because you can’t even smoke weed on FHA-subsidized property. That means extra insurance precautions. That means secure and robust air purifying systems in multiple-residential housing. That means extra security.

All that is really expensive. It’s not socks. But Bellingham has created drug free-for-all zones and then often tied all that to drug-free solutions. Are we pushing people to rehab or self-medication? Are we just letting people decide for themselves?

I don’t see a way forward in solving a homeless problem when there are so many different sets of rules that run completely opposed to one another. And a lot of people aren’t going to give up their drug of choice for a temporary garden shed. (I’d love a garden shed, personally.) They’ll just lie and do drugs there anyway.

It’s The Little Things

I once spent a day in East Berlin. That’s right. DDR. Behind the Iron Curtain. It was dull and oppressive. The shops there was five times as welcoming as those in Bellingham.

This “Don’t even THINK about ASKING us to use the bathroom or to even LOOK at our window or we’ll throw you in jail right the fuck now!!!” mentality doesn’t really fit Bellingham’s subdued excitement and socialist-democrat sensibilities.

So stop being fascist pricks.

Incentivize kindness.

Start a “Roof over Every Head” movement. Make it a thing. Like a chamber of commerce, only one that gives a shit about humanity not just profits.

There are so many commercial spaces for rent. It’s ironic that the location of the old Base Camp is now a “Gahhhhh! Get out homeless or we’ll send you to prison!!!!” site. Abandoned. The owner hopes to sell and apparently just hates that some people are too poor to buy.

Imagine you hire one security guard and open up that building for the night. Nothing more than a place for people to unroll their sleeping mats and settle in. Come in, you’re in for the night. Go out, better take all your stuff with you.

You could encourage commercial real estate owners to brag about being part of the program. “Oh….. and while we wait for the building to sell we’re providing nightly shelter to about 40 unhoused Bellinghamsters and their pets (for pet-friendly pets).”

Make it something to brag about. That you’re helping Bellingham businesses by getting people off the street, and you’re helping the unhoused by letting them sleep someplace without rain or snow falling on them all night.

Close Off Downtown and Have a Block Party

OK. So I spent a few formative years on Niagara Drive. We used to close off the entire street once a year for three days. Everyone would cook and cook. Grills and tables were dragged into the middle of the street and, for three days, we ate and drank (Kool Aid!) and played like we were one big family.

It was … the best thing ever.

So, let’s do it again. Imagine every three or four months, downtown Bellingham closes down a few streets for a weekend. Everyone in the city is invited to help. We all get together and clean up the streets. Pick up all the trash. Get rid of the non-artistic graffiti. And then we all get together and party. All the groups that feed the homeless could coordinate with a few other city resources. It could be pot luck… just wow talk about herding cats.

The police, the business people, the homeless. All of us getting together to make our city more beautiful and then just hanging out and having a casual dinner together.

I don’t know whether the amount of cleaning we could do would off-set the cost of food… but I think it’s an idea worth exploring.

Storage And Doggie Day Care

The Way Station has no shortage of officious MSW candidates (Hi, Mike!) but it’s still socks. You can go there to wash your clothes or perhaps see a doctor. You can’t go there at all if you have a dog. Well, you could ask someone else to watch your dog, but I’ve never let ANYONE watch my dog. She has needs.

I had $1600 in my wallet and almost starved to death because I could bring my dog in anywhere. She isn’t used to be around so many dogs and was not (as Mike put it) “respectful”. So I couldn’t go in stores. I couldn’t go to the Opportunity Council (that’s fine. I only have the two feet), or the mission, or anywhere.

Fund the Alternative Human Society to provide day kennel services. You could tie that together with making sure dogs are up to date on vaccinations and also help maintain the public health. I don’t mean a kennel for days, or even overnight. I mean, I need to wash my clothes and go to the store. Can you keep my dog safe for three hours?

Also with the total lack of storage. I get that providing lockers for people to store their stuff in could create a nightmare situation where people are running in an out all day, so don’t allow it. You get a storage locker. You can access it once or twice in the AM, and once or twice in the PM. Make that something controlled by hardware, not a person that would be hounded with people demanding exceptions all the time.

Spend Time With The Homeless

I think every law enforcement officer, social worker, mental health specialist and opportunity council employee should be required to spend several days with a homeless person.

I mean, don’t thrust yourselves upon the unwilling, but a lot of us want to be heard, and so many of you have absolutely NO idea how the systems you yourselves run actually work for us. You just know how they are designed to work. I promise you that your map is NOT our territory.

And that’s true of anyone who lives with a mental health or developmental disability. The systems you run do not touch us the way you intend. Why not find out why?

Maybe the DCRs at Peace Health could finally speak with some authority, and maybe the Bellingham Police could learn to stop being such ignorant, unrepentant dick bags.

There’s more, but here’s a starter.

You should trust me. I used to solve problems for a living. I’m very good at it. Just, you know, not in solving my own.

Something, perhaps, Bellingham and I have in common. So let’s all help each other out.

Come on, Bellingham. At least TRY to become the city you pretend you already are.