SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Seeing a vacant unit that houses people experiencing mental health issues is not common, said Jennifer Price, the CEO of AMI Housing, who owns and runs apartment buildings in Placer and Nevada County that provide hundreds of beds to those with mental health issues.
“We operate at like a 97% occupancy rate,” Price said. “Vacancies are very rare. We usually have people jumping to get back into a new room or new unit because there’s just nowhere else for them to go.”
Price said approximately 50% of the funding for the mental health services they provide is to keep the beds available to people in need comes from the state Mental Health Services Act, or MHSA, passed in 2004.
The MHSA provides counties with funding for mental health programs.
Now with Proposition 1 on the March 5 ballot, that would overhall the MHSA and call for more funding, specifically for beds and housing.
Price said she worries about the potential to lose funding for mental health services.
“As a housing provider, we rely heavily on the services,” she said. “And my understanding is the new proposition is going to require more bricks and mortar housing costs, versus support of services cost.”
This two-pronged measure would fund a $6.4 billion bond to drastically expand the state’s mental health and substance abuse treatment infrastructure, creating thousands more in-patient and residential treatment beds across the state.
Sitting in the park where her daughter has lived at stages due to mental health issues, Elizabeth Kaino Hopper said she is in favor of Proposition 1.
Hopper has been to Proposition 1 support rallies due in part because she said there is a real lack of facilities that provides beds for people with mental health issues.
And that lack can lead to them being housed in jails like her daughter has experienced because there was nowhere else for her to go.
“Once we can open up those pots of money for this, the housing for those most severely in need, then there’s a better chance that those people will not land in our carceral systems,” Hopper said.
She said she also believes with more housing and people off the street it will free up parts of county department’s budgets for mental health services, such as from housing less people in jails.
“We have less money. We spend on housing over here. I will put that money to these services,” she said.
Whatever the outcome from the March 5 vote, Price said she’s thankful the counties she works with are very supportive.
“I think we’ll be OK. But it is a little nerve wracking,” Price said.
And she said she knows whatever the outcome, she and her team will always do as much as they can for those in need.