OAKLAND, Calif. — The big brother Suzette Chaumette remembers was witty and kind, an aspiring historian at the University of California, Berkeley whose promise was derailed by mental illness. Over the decades, he struggled with bipolar disorder, cycling in and out of hospitals and halfway homes and into homelessness.
In June, she saw him on the local news, lying on the ground and under arrest for allegedly throwing a water bottle at California Gov. Gavin Newsom. Authorities called the 54-year-old man “aggressive.” It was the first time she had seen him in years.
“I never thought he would be that guy, but he is that guy,” she said, crying. “He’s not a bad guy.”
In California, a quarter of the 161,000 people experiencing homelessness also have a severe mental illness. An estimated 37,000 people pinball between nonprofits and public agencies, cycling through ERs, jails and the streets, with no one monitoring their overall care in a fractured system that nobody entirely knows how to fix.
There aren’t enough places for people like Suzette’s brother, Serge Chaumette, who likely require long-term clinical care, says Paul C. Webster, director of Hope Street Coalition. People with brain disorders need a range of living situations where they can “step down” from oversight as they improve.
But government reimbursement for that kind of care is low to nonexistent, he says. Medicaid, for example, will not pay for treatment in “institutions for mental disease” that have more than 16 beds.
“The public just doesn’t know. They’re mad about all the encampments and people on the streets because they don’t understand what it takes to deal with this other than to clear them out,” said Margot Dashiell, vice president of the East Bay chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
Meanwhile, families suffer quietly. Suzette Chaumette debated talking to The Associated Press about a private pain that spilled into public view only after a chance encounter with the state’s top elected official.
“Mental health is a family issue,” she said. “It does not live in isolation.”
The June encounter between the governor and Chaumette was brief.
Newsom, 53, was in downtown Oakland to promote small businesses when he was “approached by an aggressive individual,” said Fran Clader, spokeswoman for the California Highway Patrol, which provides security for the governor. Newsom appeared unharmed.
Chaumette was booked into jail and released within a day. He has no cellphone, and his family did not know where he was.
He didn’t appear at arraignment hearings the following month in a separate case in which he allegedly spat at an officer in March while being taken to a county-run psychiatric hospital on an involuntary hold.
On Friday, Alameda County deputy public defender Jeff Chorney said Chaumette is receiving care for his illness and that all charges should be dropped.
“We cannot continue to treat people with mental health issues by locking them in a cage,” he said in a statement.
