L.A. County Supervisors—Not Surprisingly—Approve Receiving Mental Health Dollars

Recently, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors approved receiving $280 million over the next three years to beef up the county’s mental health system. Here's the article.

These funds are a result of Proposition 63, where an extra tax on millionaires will be used to fund this Mental Health Services Act. Of course, it is no surprise that the county would vote to receive these funds.

A quote from the Department of Mental Health’s director clearly links some of these funds to helping the homeless:

"If we do this right, it should make a significant, positive impact on turning this situation around," said Marvin Southard, director of the county Mental Health Department. "In five years, I would expect that Skid Row would look different as a result of what we are doing and we would have many more residential facilities than we have now for people with severe mental illnesses."

The key statement… “If we do this right…”

And that is a big “IF”.

Will these funds be simply poured into a bureaucratic system that has allowed homelessness to increase in L.A. County from 25,000 in 1985 to 91,000 today?

Or will these funds be used to proactively and systematically reduce the number of people living on our streets?

The system they are using to spend these funds is the same selection and spending process they have already used for years.

Nevertheless, I hope they will choose creative and strategic projects that are accountable to the dollars, and used to numerically reduce the numbers of homeless people.

Let’s see what happens…