Newsom Proposes Multibillion Bond to Treat California’s Addicted, Mentally Ill Amid Homeless Crisis

California Gov. Gavin Newsom announces a proposed 2024 ballot initiative to treat people at risk of homelessness and with mental illness and drug addiction across the state at Alvarado Hospital in San Diego on March 19, 2023. Courtesy of Office of Governor Gavin Newsom

California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced March 19 a ballot initiative that would raise more than $3 billion to provide lodging and treatment to homeless people with mental illness and drug addictions.

“It’s unacceptable, what we’re dealing with at scale now in the state of California, not only in terms of what’s happening on the streets and sidewalks, but those that are suffering alone, those that are unseen in homes, in mobile home parks, in the streets, obviously in isolation,” Newsom told reporters at a press conference in San Diego, where he concluded his four-day statewide tour. “We have to address and come to grips with the reality of mental health in this state and our nation.”

If passed by California’s voters in November 2024, the bond would pay for 6,000 new beds in three types of residential facilities, which are expected to serve about 10,000 people every year.

• Residential campuses where patients can attend group meetings, recover, and stabilize with the help of onsite support services, according to the governor’s office.
• Smaller residential settings, or “cottages,” would also be made available with services available in the community.
• Permanent supportive housing would offer “even smaller settings to integrate individuals into the community and promote long-term housing stability.”

According to the governor’s office, the plan will prioritize the state’s most seriously ill patients and provides more funding specifically to house homeless veterans.

A woman walks past a homeless encampment in the Venice neighborhood in Los Angeles on Feb. 18, 2022. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times

California’s Mental Health Services Act would also be amended to provide at least $1 billion each year—from income tax collected from the state’s highest earners—to fund the facilities. The act currently does not cover helping those with drug addiction.

“People’s lives can be changed,” Newsom said. “Forget the cynics out there that say this is too big. We'll never figure it out. We can’t save all these folks—that’s not true.”

Voters passed the Mental Health Services Act in 2004 under Proposition 63, which is funded by a 1-percent tax on personal income over $1 million. The measure now funds about 30 percent of the state’s public mental health system, according to the governor’s office.

Newsom said past decisions shaped California’s mental health system and led him to this moment.

He said then-Gov. Ronald Reagan in 1967 signed the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act that deinstitutionalized the state’s mental health patients. Before then, patients were sent to live in state hospitals against their will, often for long periods of time.

“[The proposed change] is exciting. I mean, end of the day, perhaps this is one of the most consequential things any of us can be involved in because this touches every single one of you,” Newsom said, adding how he was also affected by the mental health crisis.

A few weeks ago, the governor said someone with whom he went to the prom committed suicide. He also lost his grandfather to suicide after he returned from war a “changed man.”

“That’s why veterans are front and center in this,” he said.

According to a Housing Inventory Count conducted in January 2022 by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, California’s homeless population grew nearly 200 percent to more than 171,500 last year compared to 2021, totaling about 30 percent of all homeless in the United States.

State Sen. Susan Eggman (D-Stockton) is expected to unveil legislation to put Newsom’s proposal on the ballot.

The announcement was one stop along the governor’s statewide tour after he decided to cancel this year’s State of the State speech to the state Legislature.

The California Republican Party roundly dismissed the governor’s tour.

“Gavin Newsom may hope that a four-day smoke and mirrors show will deceive Californians into thinking our state is doing well, but they’ll see his statewide swing for exactly what it is: a Failures Tour,” Chairwoman Jessica Millan Patterson said in a statement.