CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, MARCH 22, 2024, OR THEREAFTER
BY
THOMAS D. ELIAS
“CAN
THE POSSIBLY PASSED PROP. 1 HELP SOLVE HOMELESSNESS?”
The
possible passage of Proposition 1 raises one very basic question: Could it help
solve homelessness or merely be another financial boondoggle helping a few but
leaving the crisis in the streets essentially unsolved?
First,
there is no doubt this measure can help some of California’s approximately
180,000 unhoused. Its $6.4 billion cost will provide more than 11,000 new
treatment beds for people with serious mental and emotional problems, reinforce
the treatment they can already get in some counties through the relatively new
and unproven Community Assistance, Recovery and Empowerment (CARE) court system
and possibly reduce some of the homelessness now so visible on streets and
parks all around California.
But
some informed estimates held during this winter’s campaign that it could not
solve more than 2 percent of the problem.
Which
raises an obvious question: if this estimate is correct, is that enough of an
improvement to justify the $310 million the state’s general fund will likely
pay in each of the next 30 years to repay the bonds?
The
money would be added onto the $10 billion to $13 billion now distributed each
year to counties for mental health care and drug and alcohol treatment. Roughly
one-third of that money comes from a tax on those with $1 million-plus incomes
that’s been levied for this purpose since 2005.
That
tax would continue under Prop. 1, so there will be no substitution of bond
money for tax funds, and the new money should strictly be an add-on.
With
about 70 percent of Californians listing homelessness as California’s biggest
unsolved problem, there was plenty of reason to vote for this proposition, but
it's fate was still uncertain after Election Day. But the new bond’s proceeds
might seem like a drop in the bucket considering that about 47 percent of
today’s homeless are afflicted with mental or emotional illness, with another
150,000 others in similar difficulty now housed in prisons at a cost of about
$130,000 per year.
Some
experts said during the Prop. 1 campaign that the urgency of the problem makes
every dollar coming in constructive. But maybe not, if that gives voters the
sense they’ve just done something important, causing them to become frustrated
with government when they see the bonds solving only a bit of the crisis.
For
sure, the mental illness problem is severe. For one measure, there’s $217
million just spent by the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation
District on adding steel netting to prevent suicides by jumping from that
landmark span.
Californians
who voted for this measure were probably correct to do it, even if it couldn’t
by itself solve homelessness or mental health crises. Every dent in the problem
represents improvement in the quality of life for many who have been unhoused.
Part of the background of Prop. 1 was the
realization that one in every 20 California adults now lives with serious
mental illness and the more treatment beds available, the more likely some
progress can be made treating those who need help. At the same time, one in 13
California children of school age suffers serious emotional disturbance and one
in 10 Californians has some sort of substance abuse disorder.
One
little publicized part of Prop. 1 speaks to this last issue, allowing a small
percentage of current mental health spending to be used against substance
abuse. Since substance abuse from alcoholism to opioid dependence can lead
straight into to mental illness, this might help with both mental illness and
drug dependency.
It
all amounts to a measure of how Californians are still paying for the single
biggest error made by Ronald Reagan, who as governor in the 1960s and '70s
engineered the closing of most of this state’s mental hospitals, which were
never replaced.
Reagan
planned to set up smaller halfway houses to replace those institutions, letting
recovering mental illness patients ease back into society while still getting
treatment. Those homes never materialized and homelessness has proliferated
steadily ever since.
If
Prop. 1, combined with CARE courts, can solve even a small percentage of
today’s problems, it would be a positive. But if it’s too little and doesn’t
accomplish much, then – if it narrowly passes –. it will go down as a waste of
public money. The proof, as usual, would be in the performance.
-30-
Email
Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough:
The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch
It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias
columns, visit www.californiafocus.net
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