Prop 2: Housing and Mental Illness Programs for the Homeless
This proposition passed.
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What? | |
| Allows California to spend $2 billion in bonds on homeless prevention, including housing and mental illness programs. | |
Why? | |
The state needs voter permission on how it can use the bond money from Prop 63, this prop would expand it to include housing for the homeless. | |
Vote Yes | Vote No |
| Supports authorizing the state to fund $2 billion in homelessness prevention revenue bonds using the 1 percent tax on income above $1 million that voters approved as Proposition 63 in 2004. | Opposes authorizing the state to fund $2 billion in homelessness prevention revenue bonds using the 1 percent tax on income above $1 million that voters approved as Proposition 63 in 2004. |
Ordinarily the Legislature could decide without voter approval to spend revenue on homelessness prevention. But the Legislature's attempt in 2016 to tap the Prop 63 millionaire's tax for the No Place Like Home Fund led to a legal challenge due to the state's requirement that voters approved changes to prior ballot initiatives. Prop 63 was designed to fund mental health services. Prop 2 redefines such services by saying that housing is "a key factor for stabilization and recovery from mental illness and results in improved outcomes for individuals living with mental illness."
Supporters depict the No Place Like Home Fund as a necessary response to a public health crisis that is straining neighborhoods, businesses and first responders. "More than 134,000 people are languishing on our streets, huddled on sidewalks, sleeping under freeways and along riverbanks. As many as a third of the people living in these unsafe conditions are living with an untreated mental illness," says the official support message from two mental health advocates and the president of the California Police Chiefs Association.
The official argument against Prop 2 comes from people who say they have family members battling mental illness. The National Alliance on Mental Illness Contra Costa criticizes Prop 2 as a counterproductive attempt to divert treatment funds to housing, with a lot of money in the process subsidizing developers and paying for administration and debt service. The plan "will cause more homelessness by forcing more mentally ill people into severe symptoms that could increase the numbers living on the streets," opponents say. They say government already has money to pay for housing for the severely mentally ill, but restrictive zoning and neighborhood opposition get in the way.
Click here for a printable version of all the propositions on the November ballot.
Data from Cal Access as of 10/30/18.
