Sacramento (March 26, 2024) Proposition 1, narrowly passed by voters in March, will provide billions of dollars in funding to house and treat people suffering from mental illness and addiction on California’s streets. Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg strongly supported the measure and partnered with Gov. Gavin Newsom to ensure its passage. Proposition 1 modifies the Mental Health Services Act, which was authored by Mayor Steinberg when he served in the state Assembly. MHSA, passed by voters in 2004 as Proposition 63, created a 1 percent tax on millionaires to fund mental health services. It now generates about $4 billion a year. Since 2003, the state’s homeless and behavioral health crisis has worsened, and not enough MHSA funds are reaching those in most desperate need of services. Proposition 1 will require counties to spend more of the funds on housing and wraparound services for people experiencing homelessness. It also authorized $6.4 billion in bonds to build more housing along with mental health and substance use treatment facilities.

Here are the mayor’s remarks at the March 21 victory celebration with Gov. Newsom

“Oh, what a happy day. I want to start my remarks today by talking about baseball.

Yes, I do.

It's opening day has already come at least in Korea and will soon come in California and I was thinking about in California about how the Dodgers and the Giants - have to do both now - have won multiple World Series over the course of the decades.

And some of those victories have been series sweeps, and some of them have been seven game nail biters.

And you know what they call each of those teams after each of those victories. World Champions and winners.

That's prop 1.

We’re winners.

More importantly, the people are winners. Because what California just did was historic.

I'm the mayor of Sacramento and I served in the legislature for 14 years. And I was privileged to be the original author of the California Mental Health Services Act back in 2004. This is about an arc of history. And I know the Governor has talked about it, Assemblymember Irwin thank you so much for your leadership as well as Susan Eggman's and all the coalition partners have talked about the arc of history, how we made promises throughout California history to help people living with brain based illnesses, to live better lives, to live independently and with dignity in our communities.

And how over the course of many decades, despite heroic efforts for many, we largely failed them.

And back in my era, we were able to pass a series of [inaudible] and then the original prop 63 initiative. And frankly, we kind of did it with little fanfare and without a lot of people paying much attention. Certainly, despite my privilege of working with a number of really good California governors, no governor of California would ever think about improving the state's mental health system as a signature state priority, what are you talking about? That's not good politics. That's not something the people care about.

Well, 20 years ago, the people cared deeply about it. It's just that the politicians, especially the leaders who had the biggest voices, didn't quite grasp it. Because back then, and today, this issue is not just about the most visible manifestation of untreated mental illness, our homeless mentally ill.

It's really about all of us. It's about all of our families. It's about people we work with, and thank God today that people are coming out of their closets and talking about it, because that's part of what changes society but there's something else that changes society when the state's top leader, who is a national leader, decides to make mental and behavioral health his signature priority, history, then, is possible.

I've said it to him before and I want to say it again: 20 years ago, I never could have dreamed that a governor of the state of California would take this kind of initiative to the ballot on top of five years of billions of dollars worth of investment and brave and courageous policy change that has questioned a lot of the conventional wisdom.

But that's who we have in Governor Gavin Newsom.

We may not ever fulfill that promise 100%. But we better keep trying. And his leadership and Proposition 1 is going to get us that much closer.

Homelessness need not be hopelessness.

Living with mental illness need not be a life sentence of disconnection, unemployment, jail, and early death.

No more! Jacqui Irwin is right - the hard work is ahead of us, because implementation is everything.

And yet, it is so important to take this moment with a full heart and with great gratitude, to say thank you to everyone who made this happen. And especially my friend the Governor of the State of California Gavin Newsom.”