From K-QED. I'm Olivia Alan Price. I'm Jessica Plachik and this is Bay Curious. Earlier this year, we asked

you for your questions on a topic that is often on our minds here in the Bay Area, homelessness.

More than 1300 of you responded.

One theme that kept coming up in question after question was the role that mental illness plays in homelessness.

Take this question from listener Debbie Ow.

Is this situation as bad as it is because of the closure of mental health facilities in our state.

A little context.

She's talking about when California started emptying state mental hospitals decades ago.

Did that ultimately send people out into the streets?

In 2015, San Francisco's homeless count found that more than half the people experiencing

chronic homelessness said that they have some form of psychiatric or emotional condition.

So there are a lot of people suffering from mental illness in our streets.

That's a fact and it's serious.

We are talking about people who are almost universally mad and sad, not bad.

That's Jason Albertson of the San Francisco Homeless Outreach Team.

He helps people in tent encampments, find shelter, get to

doctor's appointments, and find meals. He says he finds at least one person with

severe mental illness in every tent encampment. All right, client number two.

I joined Albertson's morning meeting

where his team talks about how best to address

each individual's needs.

With the diagnosis of agoraphobia,

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