To My California Friends

Voting recommendation: NO on Prop 1!

Hey friends. As we enter a tumultuous election year, I will always remind you that homelessness is on your ballot. Whether it’s explicit or not, the candidates and propositions we consider deeply affect the world of housing and homelessness in big and small ways. I hope this year to be plugged in and connected enough to bring you recommendations specific to the various places you all live, but I can’t promise I’ll catch everything. If you see something you have questions about, please don’t hesitate to reach out. I have people I trust with these kinds of things all over, and likely can help point you in a good direction.

For now, I come to you with a California specific recommendation for the election this Tuesday. Friends, please vote NO on Proposition 1.

This is a textbook case of obscure and confusing language, designed to look like a compassionate response to homelessness. What it does in actuality is take funding from chronically-underfunded county mental health programs (which are, admittedly, imperfect) and redistributes it to a State effort that largely seeks to involuntarily commit unhoused people to psychiatric facilities. This agenda, which has gained popularity in CA under Newsom (and in NYC under Adams) is a cruel and overzealous response to a problem that has better solutions. We can’t incarcerate our way out of our homelessness or mental health crisis; not even by calling it “treatment.”

I recommend this piece for more extended reading (even if I disagree with a couple things in it):

https://calmatters.org/commentary/2024/02/mental-health-risk-proposition-1/