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Dear Neighbor,
Everyone reading this will likely pass by someone living, and suffering, on the streets today. I could not have said the same thing with certainty 10 years ago.
Over the last decade homelessness in California has surged by nearly 60% — even while the rest of the country has experienced a net decline in homelessness.
What happened?
A number of factors have come together to create this crisis: A housing shortage that has driven up costs faster than incomes. Deinstitutionalization of our mental health system. A crisis of addiction fuelled by stronger drugs and weakened accountability.
The truth is, none of the big issues California faces, especially homelessness, can be explained or solved in one fell swoop. There is no silver bullet. But bit by bit, piece by piece, we can put in place and execute the policies that will lead us out of this crisis.
We’re addressing the housing shortage by making it easier to build housing where it makes sense, modernizing ADU policy, and pushing to streamline CEQA review processes. We’re also scaling up our shelter capacity by getting creative – investing in tiny homes that have led to a 15% decrease in unsheltered homelessness over two years, and, recently, approving a budget that will create safe sleeping sites with the capacity to serve 500 homeless neighbors.
We’re addressing the mental health and addiction crisis by advocating to our County to implement Care Courts which allow family members to petition the courts for treatment for loved ones. We passed Proposition 1 in March with the promise to build new 10,000 treatment beds statewide and Senate Bill 43 in 2023 to expand conservatorship laws to include people struggling with severe addiction who need longer-term, service-intensive care.
But we still have work left to do. We haven’t yet given our judges the tools they need to hold people accountable for engaging with treatment for addictions that are harming those around them and putting their own lives in jeopardy.
Proposition 36 aims to change that. It would, if passed, reform the pieces of Proposition 47 which many believe have led to an increase in retail theft, drug overdoses and homelessness.
In 2014, Prop 47 made shoplifting (stealing items worth $950 or less from a store) and drug possession misdemeanors, no matter how many times people offended, how trapped they were in addiction, or how much harm their repeat actions caused. While this achieved the goal of reducing our jail population, it has also contributed to an overdose epidemic, rising retail theft, closures of small businesses, and a pattern that sees people endlessly cycle between our streets, hospitals and the justice system without real intervention and treatment.
To address this, Prop 36 gives judges new tools to mandate that repeat drug offenders engage in treatment programs, increases punishment for repeat and organized retail theft, classifies fentanyl as a hard drug, and requires that those convicted of selling fentanyl are told that continuing dealing can lead to a murder charge. You can read a nonpartisan analysis here.
As we get closer to the election, I will continue to share information about what’s on the ballot. Because the more we know about a problem, the more we can use our voice and our vote to fix it.
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