Community

Fighting Homelessness: Gov. Newsom Sets Sights on Mental Health, Addiction

“This past year, California has been able to move 58,000 individuals off our streets and into the housing and treatment they desperately needed,” said California Governor Gavin Newsom, adding that it will require a multi-pronged approach to end homelessness because the housing, medical and social needs of unhoused people vary.

Published

4 years ago

February 3, 2022

Oakland Post

Although the state makes up 12% (nearly 40 million residents) of the U.S. population, 27% of all homeless persons live in California.

By Antonio Ray Harvy, California Black Media

Gov. Gavin Newsom says his administration is emphasizing combating drug addiction and mental illness as part of the state’s multi-year plan to solve California’s homelessness crisis — the worst in the country.

Newsom says focusing on those health needs of unhoused people is a component of his ongoing “Comeback Plan,” an effort launched last year to help the state recover from the economic and social impacts of the pandemic.

“This past year, California has been able to move 58,000 individuals off our streets and into the housing and treatment they desperately needed,” said Newsom, adding that it will require a multi-pronged approach to end homelessness because the housing, medical and social needs of unhoused people vary.

When Newsom presented his budget proposal for Fiscal Year 2022-23 on Jan. 10, he asked the Legislature to approve $12 billion to support his housing strategy. About $3 billion of that amount would be spent on behavioral health housing, creating 44,0000 new housing units and treatment opportunities for people who are mentally ill. Another $2 billion would go to local governments in the form of flexible aid for housing programs, he said.

“The California Blueprint will double down on those efforts, focusing on clearing encampments, while also setting the groundwork for long-term systemic change with significant investments in mental health and substance abuse treatment to get vulnerable people off the streets.”

Black Californians are disproportionately homeless. Of the estimated 160,000 unhoused people in the state, more than 40% are African American.

Newsom said, in addition to several other measures like securing housing for students and veterans, his administration is currently considering a plan to move the state toward conservatorship for people who are mentally ill.

He did not give details about the program, but he said there is a possibility the state will begin entrusting the care of mentally ill people to individuals or institutions in the near future.

In 1967, when Ronald Reagan was governor of California, the State deinstitutionalized mentally ill patients after the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act (LPSA) was passed and signed into law. California was one of the first states to deinstitutionalize mentally ill patients.

The number of mental patients occupying mental hospitals in California reached its highest point at 37,500 in 1959 when former Gov. Jerry Brown’s father, Edmund G. Brown, was governor. It dropped to 22,000 patients eight years later, according to a report by Chauvet Public Relations titled, “The History of Homelessness and Why We Can Do Better.”

Supporters of LPSA believed the law would provide protections for mental health patients and eliminate “the inappropriate, indefinite, and involuntary commitment of persons (to mental institutions) with mental health disorders,” the language of the bill reads.

LSPA critics say it inappropriately empowered mentally ill people to make important health care decisions for themselves when many of them had neither the will nor ability to do so.

When Reagan became president in 1980, he used the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (OBRA) to repeal President Jimmy Carter’s Mental Health Systems Act, which funded federal mental health programs.

The OBRA gave mental patients the authority to make decisions about their treatment, including the options to seek care outside of a mental institution, get treatment at state-run clinics or the freedom to administer their own medication.

Last fall, the Newsom administration publicly let it be known that it is was leading the charge to provide solutions in the areas of low-income housing, mental health, and the state’s enduring homelessness problem.

In October, Newsom vetoed Assembly Bill (AB) 36, authored by Sen. Sydney Kamlager (D-Los Angeles) when she was an assemblymember. The bill would have provided people experiencing homelessness access to health and social services outside the walls of a traditional medical clinic, including mobile clinics and shelter-based and other transitional housing-based health care.

According to Kamlager, AB 36 would have been the first law of its kind in the nation offering unhoused people Medi-Cal benefits without them having to share the cost.

Newsom’s letter explaining the veto says that the unhoused can already receive similar service through California’s Presumptive Eligibility program, which offers Medi-Cal and timely health care.

The bill was endorsed by 70 organizations and leaders across the state, including Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti. In L.A. County, where over 66,000 people are homeless, African Americans make up 34% of that number although the total Black population is nearly 8%.

People of color in California experience some of the highest rates of homelessness in the nation. For example, nationally, 55 Black people experience homelessness out of every 10,000. In California, that number is 194 out of every 10,000.

Pacific Research Institute (PRI) a San-Francisco-based research think tank released a report in April 2021 that specified decreases of homelessness in major metropolitan areas such as New York City and Seattle.

The report, “No Way to End California’s Homelessness Crisis,” says that “Clearly, California is doing something wrong” in terms of finding solutions. Although the state makes up 12% (nearly 40 million residents) of the U.S. population, 27% of all homeless persons live in California, stated Kerry Jackson and Wayne Winegarden, the report’s authors.

According to Jackson and Winegarden, mental illness is one of the driving forces behind the California’s chronic homelessness problem.

But all hope is not lost, the researchers say.

“A new approach is needed. To cut through the state bureaucracy, California should rely on private efforts to minimize homelessness. Private organizations are typically better equipped than the government to make real differences in the lives of the homeless because they tailor programs to meet the specific needs of individual homeless and can adapt where the government cannot.”

Oakland Post

Posts by Oakland Post

Up Next

Marin City’s George Duke Remembered in Celebration of City’s 80th Anniversary

Don't Miss

Black California Judge Among Frontrunner Nominees to Fill U.S. Supreme Court Vacancy

Oakland Post

Click to comment

Activism

Diabetes in Black California: Turning the Tide from Crisis to Control

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System data, nearly 17.9% of Black adults in California have been diagnosed with diabetes — above the national Black adult average of 16.8%, and nearly five points higher than California’s overall adult rate of 12.6% across all races. California ranks 24th out of 39 states with available data for Black adult diabetes rates.

Published

22 hours ago

July 5, 2026

Oakland Post

Dr. Khadijah Lang is a family physician with a clinic in Los Angeles who specializes in several family medical practices, including prenatal care. Lang believes in family medicine. She says it is important to treat all members of a family. Thursday, June 5, 2026. Photo by Solomon O. Smith/California Black Media.

By Charlene Muhammad, California Black Media

Crystal Lambert knew something was terribly wrong with her three-year-old granddaughter as she sped down the street trying to get her to the hospital.

“I thought she got a hold of some poison,” Lambert recalled.

Doctors found Lambert’s granddaughter had a blood sugar level over 800, diagnosing her with Diabetic Ketoacidosis(DKA), a state in which the body, starved of insulin, begins to shut down.

Lambert said she was born with a pancreas that was not fully functioning — it lacked the specialized cells required to produce insulin.

Her granddaughter survived and is five years old today. Now, she gives herself insulin shots, asks endless questions about her condition, and runs like the spirited child she is. But the terror of that night transformed Lambert — and ultimately inspired her to launch the We Fight Back Organization, a mobile health and food access initiative serving underserved communities across California. Lambert is the executive director.

The Crisis by the Numbers

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System data, nearly 17.9% of Black adults in California have been diagnosed with diabetes — above the national Black adult average of 16.8%, and nearly five points higher than California’s overall adult rate of 12.6% across all races. California ranks 24th out of 39 states with available data for Black adult diabetes rates.

Nationally, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Black Americans were 24% more likely than the overall U.S. population to have diabetes in 2024. They also died from diabetes 78% more often than the general population in 2022. Black Americans are also more than twice as likely as the overall population to develop kidney failure caused by diabetes.

According to the California Health Care Foundation’s 2024 Health Disparities Almanac, Black Californians have the shortest life expectancy in the state at just 74.6 years — due in part to chronic conditions like diabetes and its devastating complications.

Leon Rock, co-founder of the African American Diabetes Association, believes statistics, though revealing, only tell part of the story.

“There are a whole bunch of Black folks that don’t tell you that they have diabetes — or don’t know,” he said.

And the disease itself, Rock is careful to note, is not what kills. “They die from the complications. That’s heart attack, that’s stroke, that’s amputations of legs, of feet. Going blind. All those complications are inherent in a system that has impacted Black folks with diabetes in California and across America.”

Crystal Lambert, creator and executive director of We Fight Back. She started the organization out of a need to learn more about diabetes on behalf of her granddaughter. Now she is looking to spread the impact of her organization to the valley. Friday, June 6, 2026. Photo by Solomon O. Smith/California Black Media.

Crystal Lambert, creator and executive director of the We Fight Back Organization, started out of a need to learn more about diabetes on behalf of her granddaughter. Now she is looking to spread her organization to the valley, on Friday, June 6, 2026 Photo by Solomon O. Smith/ California Black Media

An Information Gap Fuels the Crisis

For Rock, part of the solution is diagnosis. He says the medical and public health systems are failing Black Californians by the absence of information designed for them.

“That is the bottom line. We need good information. Information that is culturally specific,” said Rock.

Telling people to eat healthy or exercise, he added, falls short when culturally specific alternatives are not provided, and when many residents of urban communities do not feel safe exercising in some neighborhoods – or outside at night.

Dr. Khadijah Lang, a family medicine physician and president of the Golden State Medical Association, agrees that the roots of the crisis run deeper than individual behavior — and blaming patients misses the point.

“We are not genetically predisposed to diabetes,” Lang said. “But the system under which we live increases the likelihood that we will develop it.”

What the Body Needs — What Communities Are Denied

Type 2 diabetes, which accounts for 90 to 95% of all diabetes cases, according to the CDC, develops when the body can no longer use insulin effectively to regulate blood sugar. Left unmanaged, it damages nerves, kidneys, eyes, and the cardiovascular system. The hemoglobin A1C test is a blood draw that reveals how the body has processed sugar over the previous three months — not just at the moment of the test. It is the standard tool for both diagnosis and ongoing monitoring.

That distinction matters, Lang emphasized, because patients cannot manipulate three months of blood sugar history the way they might fast for a day before a single blood draw.

“The pill is not meant to undo or control a sugar level that’s being constantly stressed,” Lang said. “It’s meant to work in conjunction with a low-carbohydrate diet and exercise.” She recommended at minimum 30 minutes of physical activity five days a week — breakable into 10-minute sessions for those who need it.

Lang stressed that education must be delivered in language people recognize and can relate to. The goal is to inform them of the choices that serve their health best, she said.

But for many Black Californians, even those informed choices remain out of reach, Lambert said.

“They need access to healthy foods and medication, too” she said.

California has made some critical policy advances. The state has expanded access to the Continuous Glucose Monitor (CGM), which has transformed diabetes care for state residents. Assembly Bill 365, introduced in 2024, proposed requiring Medi-Cal to cover the costs of CGM and other related medical equipment but it failed in the State Senate. Since then, the California Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) reports that the core Medi-Cal CGM benefit now available to eligible patients was solidified through previous budget actions and pharmacy policy updates.

These measures, while meaningful, have not closed the gap for the communities most at risk, according to advocates.

Control Through Community

Health care advocates conclude that the solution must be communal, culturally grounded, and sustained — not a fad, not a celebrity moment, not a single clinic visit. For example, observed Lang, lifestyle shaped by shared values and collective accountability can move the needle where individual prescriptions have not.

Rock is building infrastructure to match the urgency, establishing local chapters of the African American Diabetes Association across the country, with California next.

“We have to do for self, period,” he said. “Health is wealth. We have to eat to live.”

And Lambert, whose granddaughter unknowingly started all of this for her, keeps showing up.

“Diabetes advocacy is about dignity, education, prevention, and hope,” she said.

Video: Diabetes Disparity Exposed in California

This article is supported by the California Health Care Foundation

(CHCF). Visit www.chcf.org

Oakland Post

Posts by Oakland Post

Activism

Oakland Post: Week of July 1 – 7, 2026

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of July 1 – 7, 2026

Published

1 day ago

July 5, 2026

Oakland Post

To enlarge your view of this issue, use the slider, magnifying glass icon or full page icon in the lower right corner of the browser window.

Oakland Post

Posts by Oakland Post

Arts and Culture

Prescott Circus Theatre Presents Free Summer Performance Series

Now in its 41st year, the Prescott Circus Theatre is a nationally recognized performing arts education program for Oakland youth. The circus offers safe environments that challenge Oakland youth, through circus arts training, to develop the skills and confidence to thrive on stage, in school, and in life.

Published

1 week ago

June 26, 2026

Oakland Post

Prescott Circus showcase pathways pyramid. Photo courtesy of Prescott Circus.

By Post Staff

The Prescott Circus, Oakland’s longest-running youth circus, is returning this summer with its free shows. Join the Prescott Circus’s young stars as they share their joys and talents through stilt-dancing, tumbling, juggling, and more.

At the heart of this one-hour show, which demonstrates teamwork, pride, and joy, are Oakland Unified School District students ages 8 – 17 from more than 10 different schools

This is accomplished through no-cost school and community programs for more than 300 Oakland youth each year. Performing company members from Prescott, where the program began, perform and make appearances at as many as 40 Bay Area events each year.

The summer program is funded in part by Oakland Fund for Children and Youth, California Arts Council, Port of Oakland, and the West Davis & Bergard Foundation.

Performances will be held Tuesday, July 14, 11 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. (ASL interpreted) and Wednesday, July 15, 11 a.m., at the Malonga Casquelourd Center for the Arts, 1428 Alice St., Oakland. For free reservations go to

https://PrescottCircusSummerShows.eventbrite.com

For group reservations for camps, childcare centers, senior centers, go to www.prescottcircus.org

A community show will be held Saturday, July 18, 2 p.m. to 3 p.m., at DeFremery Park,1651 Adeline St., Oakland.