Sounding the Alarm Part 3
Preparing for disaster
If you have read parts 1 and 2 of Sounding the Alarm, you know why I’m sounding the alarm and why I think you, too, should be alarmed. Regardless of whether you have serious mental illness or know someone who does, I believe you should be concerned by the President’s Executive Order "Ending Crime and Disorder on America's Streets" which offers a barbaric solution to homelessness: lock them all up. According to this Order, the homeless are all mentally ill and substance users who can’t take care of themselves and need to be conserved. The Order advocates stripping away the right to self-determination from people who are homeless, or are mentally ill, or use alcohol or other substances. It labels them as “unable to care for themselves,” and asserts that the only answer is to lock them all up. I don’t know about you, but I can easily foresee a future in which I am unable to care for myself due to disability or misfortune. Will this kind of order be used to justify locking me up on that desperate day?
So let’s focus on how someone who is vulnerable (or has a family member who is vulnerable) to being detained/arrested/conserved can prepare for that possibility. Some of my suggestions have to do with building community, some are focused on preparing for the possibility you will be locked up, and some are focused on preserving control of assets. You might find yourself locked up anyway, doing some or all of these things will potentially soften the impact. These suggestions are grounded in the reality of what is happening to the immigrants being rounded up and housed in inhumane conditions, without proper medical care, sanitation, clean water, and nutritious food.
Assuming you don’t live in, or are able to move to, a blue state where they are less likely to make draconian changes to commitment laws, you might consider the following actions:
1. Educate yourself about the commitment laws in your State. Know your rights and the rights of your loved one. Know what the law says about when someone can be locked up and then pay attention to proposals to change those laws. If changes are proposed that you don’t agree with, write your State legislator and reach out to advocacy groups to join your voice with theirs.
2. Find your people. Find local support groups and advocacy groups and attend a meeting. Talk to friends, neighbors, and co-workers about your situation if you feel safe doing so. You are probably going to be surprised at how many of them can relate—because they themselves have a serious mental illness, or because they have a family member or friend who does. Mutual aid is essential and potentially lifesaving.
3. Make plans for what you will do if you or a loved one is arrested or detained.
a. If possible, keep some cash on hand and in your pocket. In the ICE detention centers, if you don’t have money, you can’t make calls. And, I am told, if you have money you can get better food than the slop they serve twice a day. I mean cold, hard cash since credit and debit cards can be helpful but potentially inaccessible from inside.
b. Know who you’re going to call if you need to let someone know you’ve been taken. Make sure that this person knows they are the one you will call. If your loved one is living on the street, try to talk with them about your concerns if/when this Executive Order begins to be implemented in your area. Make sure they know your phone number—get them a medical alert bracelet and put your name and phone number on it. Make sure their doctor (if they have one) knows your name and phone number, even if your loved one hasn’t signed a release of information.
c. You might give your loved one on the street a small amount of cash on a regular basis so they might have money to use to call you if they get picked up.
d. You might make a plan to connect with them once a week—say, to bring them lunch and a couple of bucks at the closest park to their regular location. If they don’t show up on schedule, you can look for them in the criminal justice system or any detention system that has been created if people are being actively detained.
4. If you have not already done so, create an estate plan. If you have a loved one with serious mental illness who might receive more than $2,000 from your estate, consider establishing a trust for that person. It might be a special needs trust. These can be helpful but often have strict limits that may prevent the trustee from paying for housing, for example. Or it could be another kind of trust. Seek out an attorney who has experience with these kinds of situations. If you don’t have anyone who can or will agree to serve as trustee, ask your attorney about retaining a fiduciary to serve as trustee.
5. If you are a person living with serious mental illness, you should make an estate plan that ensures your wishes will be followed if something happens to you. If you are conserved, all your assets will be used to pay for your housing and treatment, up to and including the sale of your home, car, or other personal property of value. You will probably not be consulted. You might want to talk to an attorney about whether there is a way to hold property or assets so they could be passed to a family member or friend in the event you are conserved or detained. There are big pros and cons to this, so be sure to think things through carefully before putting such a plan in place. To find legal aid go to Law Help.
6. As part of any estate planning, you should create a Durable Power of Attorney for Healthcare that specifically states that the person(s) named as your representative has the power to make decisions about your psychiatric care and it is to be implemented when you are involuntarily hospitalized.
7. Also, as part of any estate planning, consider establishing an ABLE account for yourself or your loved one with serious mental illness. ABLE accounts can be used to provide for any needs a disabled person has without preventing them from receiving public benefits like SSI. They can be used for housing or medical expenses or educational expenses and many other things. Your State has information on who can have an ABLE account and how to establish one. ABLE accounts can hold up to $100,000, but you can only put $19,000 a year into the account, so you need to plan in advance. You can’t just dump $100,000 in it all at once. The only drawback to an ABLE plan is that control of the plan and money rests with the disabled person.
8. If you plan to leave a home for your loved one to live in after you pass, consider whether they will have the necessary finances to pay the property taxes and maintain the home for their lifetime. Also think about whether they will need someone to help them do things like find a roofing contractor or arrange for a new HVAC system.
Those were the things I could think of. Do you have any suggestions to add to these? Are there things you have done in addition or instead of these things? It would be great if you could share your answers and thoughts in the comments.
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You provide so much great information!
Been kind of busy so I only gave some of your writings a quick read. You make good suggestions. Before reading, what came to mind first is a durable healthcare power of attorney. This is extremely important. If somebody with an SMI is locked up, the one given power of attorney is able to act as the patient's legal agent. They're able to petition the court system and and government agencies and act on the mentally ill person's behalf on a number of important matters. I would like this for myself, but my entire family turned their back on me since I'm transgender as well (when I type the word transgender, my phone offered emojis of a crying face and another one sad. Is that what transgender means? Just saying).
My quick advice is to go to your state's bar association website, and I guarantee there will be articles for free regarding these matters. And there should be links to resources. There also may be forms available as well. My past experience with these websites left me with more information than I could handle. So you'll have to Target exactly what you're intending to learn about. Many articles or guides are in PDF form and frequently are directed at the elderly, but there also are going to be guides for the situations that you were describing. Even people with early dementia are going to be included in this group, who may need to have others conduct their affairs on their behalf. The time to begin is before there's a whiff of trouble --- When a person can still enter contractual obligations (and not be in a state of mental illness preventing them the right to do this). Once they're in trouble it's kind of too late. If a situation is complex, consulting a lawyer is a good idea. A healthcare and durable power of attorney will probably cost between $500 and $800 these days. Don't hold me to numbers because it really depends. There are also organizations where people may get a break --- And possibly free advice or even representation. This also is something you could search for on the internet. If a patient is experiencing the more extreme examples of SMI, there are also things like guardianship that could be considered. Although they're messy, time-consuming and will cost $5 - 6k at the very least. But the goal needs to be having a patient gain representation from family or friends if the worst happens --- If the government disappears them or strips them of their rights and dignity. I'm getting long-winded, but just some ideas.