California pass Prop 1 aimed at mental health and homelessness crisis

A measure in California that proposed spending billions of dollars on housing and treatment for homeless people with mental health and substance abuse issues narrowly secured enough votes to pass Wednesday, according to the Associated Press.

The result comes weeks after the measure, called Proposition 1, was on the state’s March 5 ballot. But as those votes and mail-in ballots were tallied, the race grew close — highlighting the clash in California over how to address homelessness, an issue that has plagued the state for years.

Proposition 1 allocates nearly $6.4 billion to build housing and spaces for mental health care and drug treatment. It is the first major update to California’s mental health funding system in two decades, amending the 2004 Mental Health Services Act.

For months, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) championed Proposition 1, dubbed “Treatment Not Tents,” presenting it as a key measure to tackle homelessness. The state had 181,399 unhoused people in 2023, nearly 30 percent of all those experiencing homelessness in the country, according to a federal estimate.

On Wednesday, Newsom called Proposition 1’s passage a “huge victory for doing things radically different.”

“Now it’s time to get to work — repairing the damage caused by decades of broken promises and neglect to those suffering from severe mental illness,” he said in a statement on X.

While campaigning for Proposition 1, Newsom garnered support largely from local officials, law enforcement and veterans groups, who praised the effort as a needed step toward moving Californians off the streets. But organizations that opposed the measure, which included taxpayer groups and some mental health advocates, criticized its cost and said it threatened existing mental health programs.

Last month, multiple ACLU chapters in the state publicly opposed Proposition 1, urging Californians to vote against it.

“We shouldn’t fall prey to a false zero-sum game that pits our needs for mental health services and housing against one another,” Eve Garrow, a policy analyst at the ACLU of Southern California, said in a Feb. 16 statement.

Newsom’s administration has already spent billions in recent years to address homelessness. His various initiatives include the Care Court program, which allowed the state to intervene and provide mental health treatment for people experiencing homelessness.

Under the Mental Health Services Act, the state began collecting a tax from people with incomes over $1 million a year to be used for mental health services. That tax will remain the same, but Proposition 1 allows it to be used for drug treatment in addition to mental health care. It also increases the state’s share of the tax, reallocates some funding to be used on treatment and housing programs, and requires the state to report the progress of those programs.

Under Proposition 1, the state will also borrow $6.38 billion in general bonds to fund the programs.

California could provide mental health or substance abuse treatment for 6,800 people at any one time and build up to 4,350 housing units, about half of which would go to veterans, according to state estimates. But the new housing, the state’s analysis said, would reduce California’s homelessness “by only a small amount.”

Before appearing as Proposition 1 this month, the measure was considered by the California legislature as separate bills for the first time in February 2023. The Senate and Assembly bills passed in September, and the measure appeared on the March 5 ballot, kicking off a weeks-long wait to see whether voters would approve it.

Asked about the uncertainty of Proposition 1’s passage, Newsom stressed the unique aspects of the measure, including its language on housing and drug treatment that differs from the state’s previous mental health legislation, and added that the new measure was not a tax increase.

He told NBC4 this month that those involved in the effort had done “a deep dive of needs.”

“This is a game changer,” Newsom said.

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