California to ask voters to approve new mental health beds
Comment on this storyCommentSAN DIEGO — California voters would decide whether to fund a major expansion of housing and treatment for residents suffering from mental illness and addiction, under the latest proposal by Gov. Gavin Newsom to address the state’s homelessness crisis.Newsom announced Sunday that he will ask allies in the Democratic-controlled Legislature for a measure on the 2024 ballot to authorize funding to build residential facilities where over 10,000 people a year could live and be treated. The plan is the latest by the governor who took office in 2019 vowing to own the issue of homelessness in a state where an estimated 171,000 were unhoused last year.“This is the next step in our transformation of how California addresses mental illness, substance use disorder and hom...