"How to end the American obsession with driving"
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Because the government cut funding to insane asylums and other treatment facilities that could help them. Then, in the name of cleaning up their own mess (and making it someone else's problem in the process) they began practicing Greyhound Therapy. They'd find a relative or extended family member of the person who really ought to be locked up and medicated, get them a cross-country bus ticket to where ever that person was located, and slap the person on the bus to nowhere. They arrive in their "new hometown" with little to no resources (and likely a family member that doesn't want them around in the first place) and so they fall back on what they know - panhandling and existing in an intoxicated or drug-induced haze.
So yeah, a lot of these people could benefit from a structured, state-run facility that assists in providing care and structure for their lives. Unfortunately, nobody wants to be the one to pay for that care, much less work in those places.
Let's be honest here.
A large portion of this population is unfortunately beyond help. We lack the medical knowledge to fix these people if the problem is physical in the brain, and we lack a social way of reprogramming them to not be crazy if something in their childhood made them this way.
This is my impression of why they ended it - because it's unhealthy to subject anyone to working in one of these places. It would drive normal people crazy, and eventually the psychologically worst kind of people who are drawn to dominating and destroying people are drawn to these jobs and put into a position of authority over others.
So...kinda like politics.