WHOEVER TAKES THE MANTLE as California’s next governor will face an immediate test as they try to solve the crisis of homelessness on our streets.
Nearly a quarter of all homeless U.S. residents live in California, though the state is only home to 11% of the country’s overall population. Voters are frustrated by encampments that don’t seem to get any smaller. Amid limited access to mental health and addiction treatment, research has found more than a third of homeless Californians regularly use drugs, and more than a quarter have been hospitalized for a mental illness.
California is at a crossroads as it heads into next month’s primary election, and how the new governor responds to these linked issues will play a major role in whether people who are suffering get the help they need. Gov. Gavin Newsom says the number of people sleeping outside dropped 9% last year, which he credits to multiple new initiatives, such as his mental health court. But as the sector faces funding cuts, it’s unclear what will happen to the programs Newsom championed after he leaves office and whether the state can continue to build on that progress.
CalMatters, in partnership with the Steinberg Institute and Abridged by PBS KVIE, sought to interview the eight top-polling candidates for governor on these crucial themes. We asked the four candidates who agreed to interviews tough questions about homelessness and mental health policy, including when and how someone should be forced into treatment.
Here’s what they said. Candidates are listed alphabetically.
Chad Bianco – Republican
If Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco becomes governor, his plan is to take “home” out of the discussion around homelessness.
His platform is that homelessness has nothing to do with homes and everything to do with drug and alcohol abuse, which may lead to or exacerbate psychosis.
“This is not about homes,” he said. “Stop calling it homes. ‘Homeless’ was used because psychologically we feel sorry for somebody that doesn’t have a home and we believe they’re forced to live on the street. That is absolutely false. This is not about homes. Stop calling it homeless.”
What is his solution to homelessness?
A widely cited study from UCSF found one-third of homeless Californians regularly used drugs and that the most common reason people became homeless was a loss of income. Bianco dismissed that research as an “absolute travesty.” He asserted that closer to 95% of people on the street suffer from drug and alcohol addiction – a statistic he said comes from “law enforcement as a whole” without citing a specific source.
The only answer is to force people into treatment, stabilize them and get them back to wherever they were before their crisis, Bianco said.
Bianco also called Newsom’s assertion that the number of people sleeping outside in California dropped 9% last year an “absolute scam,” adding that “no one in this state believes that homeless(ness) is getting better.”
Would he make California’s main source of homeless funding (the Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention grant) permanent?
No. And he wouldn’t continue any other funding, either. “No NGO and no nonprofit is going to get money with me as the governor,” he said. He said he’d be willing to funnel a small portion of the grant toward addiction and mental health treatment.
Would he change the programs Newsom has put in place to tackle homelessness and mental health?
CARE Court (Newsom’s new mental health court) doesn’t work, Bianco said, but he didn’t say how he would change it. While he said Prop. 36 (which Newsom opposed but voters approved) could have solved a lot of the state’s problems, he said it’s failing because Newsom won’t provide the resources to make it work. Bianco also wants to fully reverse Prop. 47, the 2014 reclassification of certain low-level drug and property crimes from felonies to misdemeanors.
How would he improve California’s mental health system?
Bianco wants to make it easier to compel people into involuntary mental health treatment.
“We have to get to a point where the Legislature passes a law that we can actually force people into mental health treatment, whether they want it or not,” he said, “because if you ask someone if they want help who’s suffering from a mental health crisis, their answer is going to be no.”
Steve Hilton – Republican
Steve Hilton, a former adviser to the UK prime minister and Fox News host, places a major emphasis on what he calls wasteful spending.
There’s plenty of money in California’s budget, he said, but it goes to special interest groups instead of programs that actually help people who are homeless or have severe mental illnesses. “I think we’ve got to be honest that you’ve got a lot of corruption in the system,” he said.
Nothing about the way California is currently addressing homelessness is working, according to Hilton. The best course of action, Hilton said, is to scrap past policies and start over.
What is his solution to homelessness?
Hilton maintains that it’s categorically illegal for anyone to live outside on the street. “This is against the law, and the law needs to be enforced,” he said. The first step is to remove people from encampments, he said, then triage them to find out what services they need.
While many cities in California have made homeless encampments illegal, it’s up to individual jurisdictions whether to do so.
California’s current homelessness philosophy, called “housing first,” emphasizes offering housing without strings attached: that means getting someone inside as quickly as possible instead of using housing as a reward for someone getting sober, treating their mental illness or enrolling in other required programming. That strategy has been a “complete disaster,” said Hilton, who instead wants to free up all state funding to support sober housing.
Even if Newsom is right in his claim that the number of people sleeping outside in California dropped 9% last year (which Hilton disputes, though less aggressively than Bianco), he argues that drop is far too insignificant.
Would he make California’s main source of homeless funding (the Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention grant) permanent?
Hilton wants to upend rather than continue the current funding stream. “The fact that we’ve had this catastrophic failure that’s cost tens of billions of dollars means that we need a complete review of everything that’s been going on,” he said, “because it’s clearly not working.” He said “it’s possible” some existing homelessness programs are successful.
Would he change the programs Newsom has already put in place to tackle homelessness and mental health?
Hilton didn’t provide details about whether he would scrap, change or keep existing Newsom initiatives such as CARE Court, but he expressed a desire to overhaul state-funded programs.
How would he improve California’s mental health system?
The lack of resources available for people living with severe mental illness means that jails have become the state’s main providers of mental health care, Hilton said, which he called “completely barbaric.”
“That’s going to be the measure of success for me,” he said, “that we are no longer a society where people who need serious and intensive medical support and help are left on the streets or put in our jails.”
Despite being pressed to do so during the interview, Hilton didn’t say if or how he would change the standard California currently uses to force people into involuntary mental health treatment.
Matt Mahan – Democrat
When it comes to homelessness policy, San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan has become the big face of tiny homes.
San Jose has built a bunch of them under his direction. The city created more than 1,000 new temporary places to sleep last year, even as critics have accused Mahan of diverting too much money away from the longer-term housing that can permanently get someone out of homelessness.
Mahan touted his record in San Jose during this interview, including that the number of people sleeping outside in the city has dropped by nearly a quarter since 2019.
What is his solution to homelessness?
Much of how Mahan would handle homelessness in California appears to be based on what he, and his county counterparts, are already doing locally. In addition to his city’s temporary housing push, Mahan talked about Santa Clara County’s successful homelessness prevention program, approving and funding permanent homeless housing, and also supporting ADUs and market-rate housing. He authored a controversial policy in San Jose that allows police to arrest people who refuse multiple offers of shelter, though he didn’t bring that up during this interview. “We’ve taken an all-of-the-above approach,” he said. “It isn’t housing first or something else. It isn’t just brand-new apartments or just prevention. We’ve really taken an entire continuum of solutions that work together.”
Would he make the main source of state homeless funding (the Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention grant) permanent?
Yes. Mahan promised as governor he would fund the grant at $1 billion every year and vowed to make communities qualify for those funds based on their performance.
Would he change the programs Newsom has already put in place to tackle homelessness and mental health?
Mahan said Newsom was on the right track with his homelessness and mental health policies, but the state hasn’t implemented them to their full potential. That includes Prop. 1 (the mental health bond that promised to fund thousands of new treatment beds and homes), CARE Court (Newsom’s mental health court), Prop. 36 (which is supposed to divert people from jail into treatment) and Senate Bill 43 (which changes the way people qualify for long-term, involuntary mental health care).
How would he improve California’s mental health system?
Mahan wants to expand mandatory inpatient treatment. To start, he wants to “hold Sacramento accountable for adding hundreds of state mental health hospital beds.” He also wants to make it easier for someone to qualify for involuntary care. He’d convene a group of psychiatrists, doctors, lawyers, clinicians, civil rights advocates and other stakeholders to come up with a new standard for involuntary commitment that allows people to get help earlier.
Involuntary commitment should last around 30 to 60 days, and then the person should be placed into voluntary, transitional housing, Mahan said. He also wants to track how many people get stabilized and are released from institutional care, with the goal of increasing those numbers. “The compassionate thing to do is to intervene,” he said. “And yes, that may look like, it may in fact be, a temporary suspension of certain civil liberties.”
Antonio Villaraigosa – Democrat
Villaraigosa also touted his record on homelessness as a big-city mayor. He led Los Angeles from 2005 until 2013, during which time he said more homeless housing was built in the city than in the dozen years before. He also served as speaker of the Assembly in the late 1990s.
To address homelessness, Villaraigosa said his No. 1 focus would be building housing. Like Mahan, he sees potential in using tiny homes to get people off the street.
While Villaraigosa said he wants to address what he described as the “chaos” of people selling drugs in front of cops and defecating in the street, he stressed: “I’m not for criminalizing homeless(ness). I am for compassion. But I’m not for chaos. I’ve seen as I go up and down the state, people are calling for draconian responses to homelessness, which I don’t support.”
What is his solution to homelessness?
It’s too expensive to build homeless housing right now, he said. Investing in the much-cheaper alternative of tiny homes could be a solution. Secondary to addressing the need for more housing, California also needs to tackle the drug problem and mental health crisis on its streets, he said.
Would he make California’s main source of homeless funding (the Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention grant) permanent?
Yes, but only if there’s accountability, Villaraigosa said. He promised to set metrics to determine success in each city and county that receives funding. “It won’t just be money,” he said. “There will be metrics and results at the end of the rainbow, or there won’t be money.”
Would he change the programs Newsom has already put in place to tackle homelessness and mental health?
First, Villaraigosa wants to better track the outcomes of these programs. He said he would set up public dashboards to monitor progress, much like he did in LA with dashboards on new housing construction. Villaraigosa also wants to withhold money from counties that aren’t doing a good job using CARE Court (Newsom’s mental health court). He supported CARE Court when it started, but the program isn’t working and hardly any counties are using it to its full potential, he said.
How would he improve California’s mental health system?
If someone is on the street suffering from severe mental illness, sometimes the compassionate course of action is to commit them to a locked psychiatric institution, Villaraigosa said. Like Mahan, he wants to convene a group of experts to re-evaluate how people are currently committed, and set new standards that get more people off the street.
Another priority for Villaraigosa is the shortage of mental health professionals. To fix that, he wants to add more workers via training programs with California colleges and universities. He also wants to make insurers prioritize mental health the same way they do physical health – and provide adequate reimbursements for mental health services – which he says will help make the field more attractive to new workers.
This story originally appeared in CalMatters.