SACRAMENTO — As California lawmakers returned to work Monday after a monthslong break, a bipartisan group of state senators unveiled a proposal to tackle one of the Golden State’s toughest problems: homelessness.
Under the plan, the state would use proceeds from a $2 billion bond to construct more than 14,000 permanent housing units for chronically homeless Californians who suffer from mental illness. The state would also provide millions of dollars for temporary housing while those homes are under construction.
To minimize any impact on the next state budget, which Gov. Jerry Brown is set to unveil Thursday, the plan would tap into the tax revenue collected annually from California’s top earners under 2004’s Proposition 63 — known as the Mental Health Services Act.
“Homelessness is not just a social issue that impacts a handful of distressed communities,” Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León said at a Los Angeles news conference. “It negatively impacts families, businesses, cities and counties in every part of California.”
Almost a quarter of the nation’s homeless people live in California, with a large majority living in Los Angeles, but the problem is also acute in Silicon Valley, where 4,500 people live on the streets or in encampments each night, Santa Clara County officials estimate.
Advocates dedicated to ending chronic homelessness in the Bay Area cheered the Senate plan, saying it was time for the state to step up and address a problem that had largely been left to county and city governments to solve on their own.
“In recent years, the state’s efforts took a back seat to the heavy lifting local governments did to mitigate homelessness,” said Jennifer Loving, an advocate in San Jose who directs the nonprofit Destination: Home. “The issue wasn’t a top priority for the state until now. I only wish this proposal had come sooner.”
If lawmakers enact the plan, city and county governments could apply for a portion of the bond proceeds as well as $200 million in funding from the state budget for temporary housing assistance. The plan also calls for increased state spending on grants for aged, blind and disabled Californians who cannot work.
Sen. Bob Huff, R-San Dimas, the former Senate Republican leader, said he supports the plan because it uses a “creative approach” to “tackle a vexing problem” without dramatically increasing general fund spending. Proposition 63 proceeds would pay off the bonds over several decades.
Since erasing California’s crippling budget deficit, Brown has repeatedly clashed with Democrats over funding for Californians living in poverty, and it’s unclear if he’ll endorse this plan when he introduces a new state budget later this week.
Brown declined to comment on the plan, but Deborah Hoffman, a spokeswoman for the governor, said “the administration is supportive of efforts to empower local governments to tackle homelessness, poverty and mental health issues in our communities.”
“We will take a close look at the proposals in this package,” she added.
One of the plan’s biggest cheerleaders is former Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, a longtime advocate for the mentally ill who authored Proposition 63 to dramatically boost state spending on mental health services.
Supporting a proposal with such little impact on the state budget should be a “no-brainer,” he said.
“This is the boldest proposal to reduce homelessness in a generation,” he said at the Los Angeles news conference. “Homelessness doesn’t have to be hopelessness.”
Contact Jessica Calefati at 916-441-2101. Follow her at Twitter.com/Calefati.
