By Jocelyn Wiener -- Bee Staff Writer
Published 2:15 am PDT Monday, May 1, 2006

The incident last December stuck in Tim Brown's craw. Barton Memorial Hospital in South Lake Tahoe sent a homeless woman on a 101-mile taxi ride, dropping her off outside Sacramento's Loaves & Fishes. Brown, executive director of the homeless service organization, found that decision unacceptable. He called the hospital but was dissatisfied with their response.

The ensuing publicity caught the attention of Assemblyman Dave Jones, D-Sacramento.

"It almost seemed like it was a policy of some of the surrounding counties to send people to Sacramento to services, and they're doing that because they're not providing the services in their own counties and that's just not right," he said.

Four months later, Jones' proposed bill to address the issue is beginning to make its way through the Legislature. The bill - AB 2745 - would require hospitals to develop discharge procedures specifically for homeless patients and to submit the plans to their county board of supervisors. The idea of the bill, Jones said, is to discourage the "dumping" of homeless people across county lines, and to encourage counties to provide services for their own homeless residents.

Another bill, proposed by state Sen. Gil Cedillo, D-Los Angeles, would slap a maximum $10,000 fine on any agency that transports a homeless person to the streets near a homeless service provider without that person's permission and without confirming that the service provider has space available. The bill is one of nine Cedillo is proposing to address homelessness in the state, especially in the Skid Row area of Los Angeles.

Both Jones' and Cedillo's bills took a step forward last week: The Jones bill passed out of the Assembly Health Committee, the Cedillo bill out of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The California Hospital Association has voiced opposition to both bills on the grounds that they single out hospitals for a responsibility that belongs to all of society.

"We're really the wrong target in this conversation," said Jan Emerson, a spokeswoman for CHA.

When hospitals send homeless people to other counties or drop them off on the street, they often don't have shelters or other services to help them locally, she said.

"This is a symptom of a much bigger problem in terms of local governments and the state and what they do in terms of providing services to the homeless," she said.

In the case of Barton Memorial, Emerson pointed out, hospital officials thought they were doing the right thing by sending the woman to a warmer area, away from the frosty streets of South Lake Tahoe. They said at the time that El Dorado County had no shelter where they could send her.

Michael Stoops, acting executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based National Coalition for the Homeless, agreed that the issue of homeless dumping reflects a deeper problem.

"It points to the fact that we don't have an adequate social service infrastructure to help people that can't help themselves," Stoops said.

But he voiced support for the bills. If they pass, he said, California would be one of the first states in the nation to directly take on the issue.

He, and others who support the bill, say dumping can be traumatic and dangerous for homeless individuals who find themselves in a foreign environment. It also burdens urban counties, and the service providers located within them, with serving homeless individuals who live elsewhere.

Still, even among supporters, there is some question about how much the bills would improve the lot of the homeless.

Mike Herald, an attorney at the Western Center on Law and Poverty, said he supports the bills, though he doesn't feel they go far enough toward ending chronic homelessness.

"We need to start with policies that say we're going to prevent people from being discharged at all without housing," he said.

Herald, like Jones, points to certain successful programs in which hospitals, local government and other agencies have worked together to create safe places to discharge homeless patients.

One of the examples Jones gives is Sacramento's interim care program, a joint effort involving the Salvation Army and several local hospitals and non-profits. For several weeks after being discharged from participating hospitals, homeless patients receive support services and a bed in a shared room. The program's goal is to help them stay off the streets entirely, even once they've healed.

After undergoing surgery to fix a ripped tendon, 44-year-old Anthony Lehr stayed with the interim care program for a total of five weeks last year.

"When you're like that, you can't heal on the street," he said. "It's nearly impossible."

Even so, he nearly lost his foot to a staph infection. Because he had a place to stay, an in-home caregiver could visit him.

"If you say, 'I'm the third tree on the right down by the river,' she can't find you," he said.

He eventually moved into his own apartment, and now works part time at Loaves & Fishes.

As more light has been shined on the issue, Brown said the incidents of dumping have declined in Sacramento. He said Placer County, which he had previously called the region's worst offender, has opened a homeless shelter. He hopes the legislation, if it passes, will encourage other counties to follow suit.

"They need to do more about their own homeless problems," he said. "There's simply no excuse for not having any basic shelter or transitional housing for people."