Prop 2 Reveals the Importance of Housing

“It is interesting that a whole host of issues in California boil down to housing problems,” says Ofer Elitzur of Cox, Castle Nicholson. Last week, Los Angeles voters agreed to extend mental health services to include supportive housing through Proposition 2. The measure will allow the funds generated by the millionaire tax the funds mental health services to be used to develop supportive housing projects. Los Angeles has a increasing homeless population due to the affordability crisis, and many suffer from mental illness. This shift underscores the demand for housing throughout the state.

“There was a shifting acknowledgement that we need housing as part of the mental health policy of the state,” Elitzur, a partner at Cox, Castle Nicholson, tells GlobeSt.com. :This bond was passed because there was a lawsuit between mental health advocates, who thought that the previous authority given by the voters was really for direct services and that there wasn’t authority to expand the use of that money to housing. It was basically a skirmish between two groups of people who have differing views of how to help people with mental health problems.”

Prop 2 was really a shift in thinking about housing, according to Elitzur. It started with a dispute about how the mental health services funds should be used, and if mental health services include supportive housing. “Prop 2 uses mental health money that has been approved by the state through Prop 63, which was passed in 2004 as the Mental Health Services Act,” he explains. “That proposition put a tax on incomes over $1 million to fund county mental health programs. In 2016, there was a statute passed through the legislature to dedicate some of that money for supportive housing. In that circumstance, you have a shift in state’s awareness of mental health support and mental health subsidy to acknowledge that this is not just direct service that people with mental health problems need. We also need housing services for people with mental health problems. If you serve someone with a mental health problem, and they go back to their tent on the street, it isn’t particularly helpful.”

Housing has become a major topic in California, and this was one of many housing-focused propositions that made the ballot. It is likely a trend that we will continue to see. “Voters said that we should use mental health funds from income tax to help mental health services and provide housing,” says Elitzur. “It is really more of a voter acknowledgement of the reality that housing is a necessary component of mental health policy.”