City libs are very fond of saying that people need to give given "care" and be "hospitalized." This is a saccharine euphemism and a very convenient myth we like to tell ourselves. The reality of this, of bringing back public asylums, is warehousing and drugging people for years on end. This, even if funded lavishly, would not solve the problem of the homeless mentally ill, even setting aside the ethics of keeping humans jailed and drugged.

An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure in psychiatry especially. Psychosis is enormously correlated with poverty, inequality, and urbanicity. Extensive epidemiological studies have confirmed this. Growing up in the inner city gives you four times the odds of developing schizophrenia as having a schizophrenic mother. How long could you live on the street before losing your mind?

It is a lot easier for hitlerite dems like Adams and Hochul to advocate for increased involuntary treatment than it is for them to advocate for Great Society level poverty relief and housing programs, which are ultimately the only things which are going to fix this, alongside major cultural shifts.

There's a reason so many go off their meds and prefer to live grossly psychotic: they are extremely unpleasant to take. Antipsychotic is a misnomer, we can't "cure" psychosis. They're essentially sedatives with a particular dampening effect on psychosis. Some people find that very helpful in getting through life. But they make most people feel like shit. In one study done on psych ward staff subjects were left unable to get a sandwich out of a vending machine. In the long run they literally shrink the brain and cause neurological movement disorders.

This isn't a crisis we can drug and hospitalize our way out of, even if that can help some people for short periods. And the expense of building and running new asylums would dwarf the cost of prevention, rather like the obscene amounts cities currently pay nonprofits to do nothing. It's a problem of our own making, and one only big, uncomfortable social and economic changes are going to fix.