By Luke Tasker
Times of San Diego
A homeless man sleeps below the entrance to the Ocean Beach Pier. Photo by Chris Stone
Proposition 1, the “Behavioral Health Services Program and Bond Measure, is a policy disaster. From funding involuntary treatment to gutting county programs, the measure fails to even put a dent into the homelessness crisis while actively worsening conditions for mental health. It’s a bloated, cruel, and ineffective bill masquerading as a necessary reform.
Before going into why I urge a “no” vote on Prop. 1, I’d like to share why I believe my perspective is important. Diagnosed with autism, OCD, and anxiety at a young age, I consider myself a disabled self-advocate, and I came upon Prop. 1 while researching laws that harm disability rights.
Most Californians don’t know that Prop. 1 actively harms these rights, which is why groups like Disability Rights California and the League of Women Voters of California have issued statements opposing the law. The biggest reason why disability rights groups oppose the law is its relation to the unethical and overused practice of involuntary treatment.
Supporters of Prop. 1 characterize the measure as a “housing proposition.” While it most certainly does build housing, the majority of the funds are not dedicated to that, but instead to “reforming” mental health. Of the $6 billion dedicated to the reform, $1 billion goes directly to voluntary and involuntary facilities, while $1.5 billion goes to cities, counties, and tribes to help fund these facilities. Only $1.9 billion goes to housing.
So the main issue with the funding plan is that a lot of the money has the potential to go to involuntary treatment.
For months, proponents of Assembly Bill 531, one of the two laws that puts Prop. 1 on the ballot, promised that the funding would not go to involuntary facilities. But all language referring to funding for “voluntary” facilities was scrapped in the measure as well as in a factsheet published by the Governor’s office.
A large percentage of the funding in Prop. 1 goes towards constructing hospital beds for these involuntary facilities, meaning Californian tax dollars are going to support this inhumane and ineffective “treatment.” This is only one of the many ways that Prop. 1 hurts mental health.
Proponents of Prop. 1 correctly point out that homelessness is a huge issue in California. California has over 180,000 homeless people, an insanely high amount that requires drastic changes to the entire housing industry to even have a chance at housing a significant portion of the homeless.
Ignoring the fact that Prop. 1 wouldn’t even put a dent in this number, there’s the question of how many of the homes would even be built. In 2018, the heavily ambitious No Place Like Home ballot measure was approved by the voters. This measure was a $2 billion bond to construct 20,000 homes.
Yet as of February, this program hasn’t even constructed 10% of the promised housing, with just 1,797 homes being built. Proposition 1 seeks to get around this by ignoring environmental protections, meaning that in addition to all of the other issues this proposition has it’s also going to be terrible for the environment.
I urge everyone to vote “no” on Prop. 1. It’s not going to help the vast majority of the homeless, and actually does more harm than good with a price tag of $6.8 billion to go along with it. Read the fine print.
Luke Tasker is an autistic self-advocate living in San Diego.