A place to call home

State's Prop. 63 funds help get mentally ill off the streets

By Judy Lin - Bee Capitol Bureau

January 25, 2007

Mildred Littlejohn, 47, shows off the kitchen of her North Highlands apartment. She receives help with her rent from Turning Point, an organization that gets funding from a state program to help mentally ill homeless people get off the street. Sacramento Bee/Randy Pench

State officials today are rolling out an ambitious plan to create 10,000 new housing units for homeless people who suffer from mental illness.

The Department of Mental Health and the California Housing Finance Agency plan to spend up to $75 million a year in Proposition 63 funding on the brick-and-mortar stage of establishing permanent, supportive housing for the mentally ill.

An additional $40 million will be used to subsidize rental units, bringing the investment to $115 million a year for addressing one of the state's ongoing social challenges.

"It's our first major initiative under the Mental Health Services Act," said Sen. Darrell Steinberg, author of Proposition 63, which voters passed in 2004 to tax individuals who make more than $1 million for expanding mental health services in California.

"We promised to voters that we would deliver big impacts, and this will be one of the big impacts to address homelessness."

The $115 million, Steinberg said, will be available every year for the next 20 years due to higher-than-expected revenue projections from Proposition 63. Combined with new housing bond money passed under Proposition 1C and existing federal funding, Steinberg said the state could generate up to $6 billion in the fight against homelessness.

While mental health advocates hailed the housing initiative as a critical element for helping people get off the streets, it comes at the same time that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is proposing to cut the precursor program to Proposition 63, also written by Steinberg under Assembly Bill 2034.

Mental health advocates say AB 2034 has helped an estimated 4,500 people transition off the streets into permanent housing where they can regularly receive medical and psychiatric treatment, and even start working.

"If the money was to go away today, we'd have to stop all operations and support for the people we're working with," said John Buck, executive director of Turning Point in Sacramento, one of three nonprofit mental health service agencies currently receiving AB 2034 money to run a homeless intervention program. "That's a big concern."

Buck said the program has proven to be cost effective simply by reducing the number of days people suffering from mental illness spend in hospitals or in jail.

One of Turning Point's success stories is 47-year-old Mildred Littlejohn, a formerly homeless mother who has been living independently in a one-bedroom apartment nestled in a sprawling, gated North Highlands complex for the past three years.

After 12 years of drifting from Connecticut to California, Littlejohn, who suffers from schizophrenia, cherishes having her own bedroom, which she describes as her "sanctuary."

"I never knew I didn't have to be on the street," said Littlejohn, whose son is now 26 and drops by for visits.

In her bedroom decorated only with a black dresser, matching nightstand and a bed she purchased on a layaway plan, Littlejohn deliberately keeps the white walls bare so she's not distracted from sleep at night. A white shopping cart is collapsed leaning against one wall. She takes it out when she rides the bus to Sam's Club for groceries.

"I'm like a pit bull," she said. "I found my niche, and I don't want to share it with anybody."

Department of Finance spokesman H.D. Palmer said Proposition 63 revenues are coming in higher than anticipated, from $1.6 billion this fiscal year to $1.8 billion in 2007-08.

"The budget proposes to eliminate this program," Palmer said. "You have similar services to what is being provided under Proposition 63."

Steinberg said he wants the Legislature to reinstate $55 million in annual funding for AB 2034.

"We're going to fight that cut. Even though the projections for the Mental Health Services Act are very positive, when it comes to the years of neglect, no one can argue that there's too much money going to mental health illness."