Proposition 1, a mental health funding reform and bond measure on the March primary ballot, could help change a failing system.
Get news and commentary on the California issues you care about in one email.Get the news that matters to all Californians. Start every week informed.Kimberlee Booth, center, of San Luis Obispo marches with other supporters following speeches at a rally in support of Prop. 1 at the state Capitol on Jan. 31, 2024. The proposition aims to reform mental healthcare in the state.
For nine years, I begged Alameda County agencies to give my intermittently homeless and schizophrenic ward the care she needed to stay alive and well. Last September, some 12 years after I became her legal guardian,, the “millionaire’s tax” of 2004, has generated tens of billions of dollars for California’s counties to help people suffering from the most “serious, disabling and persistent” forms of mental illness.
Early on in my nine-year struggle for my daughter, public facilities kept discharging her despite knowing she would immediately use meth and run away. I could not understand why so much MHSA money was being spent so freely while the county rationed hospital beds and supportive residences so strictly. At one point, I didn’t even want to eat the ham sandwiches served at public meetings for Alameda County’s behavioral health department simply because MHSA money paid for them.
Furthermore, Prop. 1 retains local funding that can prevent relapse and deterioration of people already diagnosed with serious illness, which was the original meaning of “prevention” in the MHSA. The $6.4 billion bond measure included with Prop. 1 designates $2 billion for supportive housing and $4.4 billion for mental health treatment beds – 10,000 of them.
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