Governor’s Briefs: Expanding Mental Health Care Statewide and an Appointment

California’s New Projects Help to Expand Mental Health Care Capacity and Treatment Statewide

SACRAMENTO – Kicking off Mental Health Awareness Month, the state is highlighting recent projects that will help expand behavioral health treatment capacity, crisis and residential services, and a more responsive continuum of care. 

Ending California’s mental health crisis

The projects were funded by the state’s Behavioral Health Continuum Infrastructure Program or BHCIP and Bond BHCIP grants, managed by the California Department of Health Care Services or DHCS. Bond BHCIP awards are funded through Proposition 1, which was approved by voters in 2024. Bond BHCIP builds upon the foundation of the earlier BHCIP initiative, which began in 2021, in partnership with the legislature and was previously funded through the state budget.

Programs such as BHCIP and Bond BHCIP have helped create more residential and crisis treatment centers statewide.  

• Since 2021, BHCIP and Bond BHCIP have awarded a total of $5.8 billion to expand behavioral health resources and infrastructure. This has resulted in 437 projects across 546 behavioral health facilities, which will create 9,553 new beds and 47,163 new outpatient slots projected to serve more than 5.4 million individuals annually.
• Through Bond BHCIP alone, the state has now delivered to local communities a combined 6,919 residential treatment beds and 27,561 outpatient slots, exceeding Proposition 1 statewide goals in just two years and supporting 177 projects across 333 facilities.

Together, these efforts help strengthen the state’s long‑term community‑based behavioral health infrastructure – and have helped California achieve the first statewide reduction in unsheltered homelessness in 15 years — a 9% drop.

Expanding residential and recovery treatment: LA

• Los Angeles County: Homeboy Industries and community partners broke ground on Home of the Angels, a Bond BHCIP Round 1 campus model project supported by $24.9 million. The project includes a 50‑bed adult residential SUD treatment facility, a 10‑bed peer respite program, and 320 outpatient SUD treatment slots, expanding modern, community‑based alternatives to institutional care.
• Los Angeles County: Rancho San Antonio and partners broke ground on No Wrong Door, a BHCIP Round 4 project expanding outpatient services for children, transitional‑age youth, and families. Supported by nearly $4.2 million, the project will deliver 95 combined outpatient treatment slots across community mental health, youth prevention, and SUD services—expected to serve more than 23,000 individuals annually.
• Los Angeles County: With approximately $65 million in Bond BHCIP Round 1: Launch Ready funding, Los Angeles County broke ground on two 16‑bed MHRCs on the Metropolitan State Hospital campus. The project represents a modern, 24‑hour community‑based treatment, particularly for transition‑age youth.

To turn this crisis around, California has addressed problems from the crisis of loneliness in young men through the state’s Path and Purpose initiative, strengthening tools like the 988 suicide hotline, expanding community mental health supports, building stronger prevention strategies, improving reentry through more robust reentry strategies, building more housing and support, creating stronger trauma and crisis response for children, investing in California’s behaviorlal health workforce and establishing a first-in-the nation CARE Court process to help severally mentally ill people treatment.

Gov. Newsom Announces Appointments

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Gavin Newsom April 28 announced the following appointment:

Jessica Crowley, of Los Angeles, has been reappointed to the California State Board of Pharmacy, where she has been serving since 2022. Crowley has been a pharmacy preceptor at University of Southern California since 2020 and a pharmacist at Albertsons Companies since 2020.  She was a clinical pharmacist at Optum from 2025 to 2026. Crowley held several roles at CVS Pharmacy between 2010 to 2020, including pharmacist-in-charge, staff pharmacist and pharmacy intern. She is a vice president at United Food and Commercial Workers Local 770, and member of Lambda Kappa Sigma and Phi Lambda Sigma. Crowley earned a Doctor of Pharmacy degree from Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences. This position does not require Senate confirmation and the compensation is $100 per diem. Crowley is a Democrat.