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I would agree such people are a danger to themselves or others, but this law goes beyond that. Here's the text of it if you're interested. One need only be using drugs or alcohol or have a mental illness while being homeless.
What is a grave disability?
So being homeless is being gravely disabled and can be used as a reason to forcibly commit the homeless if they use drugs or have a mental condition, regardless of whether they are a danger to themselves and others.
But it is along with mental health issues or substance abuse problems. It isn't like only being homeless gets you into custody.
And custody includes putting a roof over a person's head.
I don't see how leaving these people in their current condition is the humane option.
Actually it defines being unable to provide your own shelter as the litmus test for being gravely disabled.
This law is designed to force homeless people into treatment so CA can look good by getting homeless people off the streets. There's softer and cheaper ways to do this, outlined in my many posts above. But it basically comes down to using housing as an incentive for treatment. Real housing staffed with social workers. Not locked down treatment facilities which don't work well because patients get wise to treatment when it's forced down their throats.
But it isn't just being gravely disabled that puts you into custody.
And people keep asking for a kinder method, but what do you do when a person refuses the kinder method? From the looks of it, it sounds like California is trying to build the real housing staffed with social workers to go along with compulsory treatment.
It's being gravely disabled while having a substance use disorder or mental illness. So being depressed because my wife died and I lost my house because of the medical and funeral bills around my wife's death is enough. Being caught with a bottle while homeless is enough.
I'm not against forcing people with chronic mental illness, especially untreated psychotic disorders, into treatment.
But this law casts a wide net and it will be abused. Because it's not designed to help people, but to clean up CA's image as having too many homeless drug addicts on the streets.
Per your example, I would hope the state steps in to help the guy down on his luck. And if he says no to help due to depression and possibly starting to become suicidal, then it is absolutely a good idea for the state to force him to get treatment before he becomes worse.
How is letting him drink himself to death on the street the humane option?
Being suicidal is already a means we have of placing people on a psych hold.
And yes, the state should intervene by offering help before the situation gets to this point, but we don't actually have these social safety nets.
If we did, and if we had means of getting people open to housing as an incentive for treatment, we could get a lot of willing people off the streets, into treatment, and housed, without force.
This would serve 90% of people on the streets, in my experience from being in this situation myself and around other homeless addicts/mentally ill.
For the reminder, we already have these laws. If a person is an immediate danger to themselves or others, it's very easy to get a psych hold. Do we really need to extend this to everyone on the streets using substances to make their existence a bit more comfortable?
This law might do more good than harm, I'm just concerned about its potential to be abused. Certainly there are a lot of homeless people who aren't capable, need help, and aren't getting it.
The law is definitely going to be used for surprise sobriety checks in cities as an excuse to begin to remove homeless encampments. However, it creates a standard of care to deal with some homeless as being sick instead of committing a crime.