SACRAMENTO, California — California voters passed a measure that would impose strict requirements for counties to spend on housing and drug treatment programs to address the state’s homelessness crisis.
Proposal 1 marks the first update to the state’s mental health system in two decades and a victory for Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has spent significant time and money campaigning on behalf of the measure. He raised more than $13 million to promote it, with support from law enforcement, first responders, hospitals and major city mayors. Opponents raised only $1,000.
The initial results divided voters on the issue, and it took more than two weeks after election day before a winner was confidently declared.
Newsom celebrated after the proposal narrowly passed.
“This is the biggest change in decades in the way California addresses homelessness, and a victory for doing things radically differently,” he said in a statement. “Now counties and local officials must match the ambition of California voters. This historic reform will only succeed if we all take immediate action – state government and local leaders together.”
The measure gives the state more control over a voter-approved tax that was introduced in 2004 on millionaires for mental health services, giving counties wide discretion in spending it. Counties will now have to spend about two-thirds of the money on housing and programs for homeless people with serious mental illness or substance abuse.
The initiative also allows the state to borrow $6.38 billion to build 4,350 housing units, half of which will be reserved for veterans, and add 6,800 mental health and addiction treatment beds.
Opponents, including social service providers and county officials, said the change will threaten programs that don’t just focus on housing or drug treatment but that keep people from becoming homeless.
With makeshift tents lining the streets and disrupting businesses in communities across the state, homelessness has become one of California’s most frustrating problems and an issue that will surely haunt Newsom if he ever mounts a national campaign.
Newsom touted the proposal as the culmination of his plan to reform California’s mental health system. He has already pushed for laws that make it easier to force people with behavioral problems into treatment.
William Elias, a television producer in Sacramento, said he was “hesitant” about Proposition 1 but decided to vote for it because of the widespread homelessness problem.
“That’s something that’s all around us right now,” he said. “We have all these tents here in front of City Hall.”
Palm Springs resident Estrellita Vivirito also voted yes on the measure.
“It only makes sense, you know, we have to do something,” she said.
Katherine Wolf, a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Berkeley, said she voted “no” on the measure out of concern that it would lead to more people being locked up against their will.
“I was shocked by the system of laws he built to undermine the rights of people with intellectual disabilities,” Wolf said of Newsom.
Griffin Bovee, a Republican state worker in Sacramento, also voted against the proposal, saying the state has wasted taxpayer money.
“Sacramento really shouldn’t get another dime until they actually figure out why what they’re doing isn’t working,” he said of the state’s handling of the homelessness crisis. “They spent $20 billion over the last few years trying to fix that problem, but it just got worse.”
The state accounts for nearly a third of the homeless population in the United States; approximately 181,000 Californians need housing. The state, with a current inventory of 5,500 beds, needs about 8,000 additional units to treat mental health and addiction problems.
Millionaire tax revenues, now between $2 and $3 billion a year, make up about a third of the state’s entire mental health budget.
Opponents, including some county officials, mental health providers and some Republicans, said the ballot measure would cut funding for cultural centers, peer support programs and vocational services and pit those programs against homeless services.
They said the single formula could also mean that rural counties like Butte, with a homeless population of fewer than 1,300 people, would have to direct the same percentage of funds toward housing as urban counties like San Francisco, which is home to six homeless people. times bigger.
Newsom’s administration has already spent at least $22 billion on various programs to address the crisis, including $3.5 billion to convert dilapidated motels into homeless housing. California is also providing $2 billion in grants to build more treatment facilities.