Time to Open Humane Facilities for People Who Are Homeless and Mentally Ill?

This transcript has been edited for clarity.

Hi. I'm Art Caplan. I'm at the Division of Medical Ethics at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine.

If you walk around many of our major cities today, you see a tremendous problem with homelessness. I'm not talking about people who are camped out in a park or on a street and are making a mess or littering or having sanitation issues. I'm not even talking about those who are out there perhaps using drugs.

What I'm really focusing on today is the people who are out on our streets who are severely mentally ill. We don't have great numbers on what that population is, what percentage of persons who are homeless it is. Some people I know are out being homeless because they don't trust shelters. Some people are homeless because they choose to be that way.

There certainly is a significant number of people in places like Oakland, San Francisco, New York City, and many of our big cities where we have people who are obviously schizophrenic, screaming, running around half naked; getting preyed upon by thieves, rapists, and other people who take advantage of them; and sometimes getting into violent incidents with people.