In the military, service members learn to never leave a man behind. Veterans working and participating in one of San Francisco’s alternative treatment courts say that’s exactly what the city has asked them to do.
For over a decade, Veterans Justice Court has diverted defendants facing charges in San Francisco from the traditional criminal justice system. Instead of prison time, they’re given a chance to receive substance abuse and mental health treatment.
Unlike in other counties, all veterans are eligible, even if they don’t have federal benefits to cover their healthcare. This can happen when a veteran has a less than honorable discharge, fails to prove a connection between time in the military and a health condition, or simply doesn’t know how to navigate the arduous application process.
Now, in the midst of a fiscal deficit, San Francisco plans to cut its budget for a therapist and case manager who work with the court’s defendants without benefits. As a result, court staff told Mission Local, Veterans Justice Court is no longer accepting these veterans into its diversion program.
About 15 veterans, a third of the court’s current participants, do not have benefits, counselors said. For now, they’re able to continue in the program. But it’s unclear how their cases will be resolved. Without a case manager to guide and represent them, several said they’re worried they’ll fall out of compliance and be sent back to criminal court.
“All the progress that I’ve made will be for nothing,” said Kurt, a participant in the court who Mission Local is identifying here by his first name as his case is still open. “I’ll lose everything.”
Filing a petition for healthcare benefits from the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs is complicated, said Nicholas Rusanoff, a San Francisco Veterans Affairs Commissioner who mentors the court’s participants. “The problem in San Francisco is that people who wind up in the criminal justice system and are the most vulnerable never had the capacity to file for their benefits.”
In the military, Rusanoff said, there’s a culture of “self-medicating” with alcohol. By the time veterans wind up before the court, they’ve been abusing substances and “really isolated” for years.
Counselors and attorneys who work with the court said new clients often don’t see the connection between their service and their addiction. Many don’t think they are entitled to benefits, or even know about them in the first place.
When Kurt left the army, he wasn’t thinking about filing what Rusanoff described as a mountain of “byzantine paperwork” to get his benefits. He just wanted to be free again.
Kurt, now 60, grew up on a Texas ranch with a “pet coyote” and a javelina that thought it was a dog. There was little to do in his oil town but “get drunk and get into trouble.” Enlisting at age 17 gave Kurt the chance to visit another state for the first time, even if it meant training in heat so excruciating his shoes melted.
He served from 1984 to 1990, until he could no longer stand the desk job he’d been moved to. “They couldn’t keep me inside for nothing,” he said.
Kurt rolled into San Francisco in the late 90s, looking for his daughter. It was the first city he’d lived in, and he was homeless most of the time, sleeping in an RV parked by the Bayview Hunters Point shipyard. Last year, he was arrested for felony possession of a handgun.
At first, Kurt was skeptical of Veterans Justice Court and the treatment plan it prescribed. He’d used drugs for most of his adult life just to keep his “head out of the fog,” and he had no desire to quit.
But fighting the charges in criminal court meant risking a prison sentence. That, Kurt said while trying not to get emotional, meant losing precious time with his best friend, an 11-year-old rescue dog named Baby. A court therapist convinced him to give the diversion program a try.
Kurt got more than he bargained for. Court staff, he said, became his “extended family” and helped him finally get stable housing. His case manager, Hattie Halloway, referred him to Swords to Plowshares, a nonprofit where attorneys help veterans claim their benefits.
Halloway is known for that. She gets veterans “off of the city’s dime and onto health insurance” through the federal government, Rusanoff said.
A year in, Kurt was feeling “good” about his weekly counseling sessions. “Really, really, good.” He began thinking about “graduating” from court, attending community college, and returning to the wide open spaces of his home state. Then he learned his therapist and case manager could be stripped of their jobs.
Both positions are paid for by an approximately $250,000 annual contract with the nonprofit San Francisco Pretrial Diversion Project. Come July, the San Francisco Human Services Agency plans to cut that contract as the city faces a growing budget deficit.
The department’s goal is to preserve direct services for veterans, including case management, the Human Services Agency wrote in a statement to Mission Local. “Where possible, individuals impacted by these reductions will be referred to the remaining core services.”
Most defendants with serious behavioral health disorders, unstable housing, no cell phone, and no benefits wouldn’t be able to keep appointments with social service providers without a case manager, Veterans Justice Court counselors and attorneys said.
Cutting their counselors “perpetuates a feeling that they don’t belong,” said Megan O’Leary, an attorney at Swords to Plowshares. “On their own, they’d be set up to lose.”
With one month left before Mayor Daniel Lurie submits his budget proposal to the Board of Supervisors, the court is searching for outside funding to ensure veterans like Kurt are not left behind.
Kurt, meanwhile, is not taking anything for granted. Not his time left with Baby or in veterans court, “a corner of something positive in a really negative system.”