Newsom loses even if Prop. 1 ekes out a win

Gov. Gavin Newsom had planned to give his State of the State address on Monday, but delayed it as he awaits the final tally on Proposition 1 — the statewide bond measure to fund mental-health and homelessness services. Two weeks after the election, the measure is ahead by a mere 20,000 votes with both sides pushing voters to correct as many as 110,000 disqualified ballots.

Prop. 1 is the governor’s signature effort, yet a 50.1 to 49.9% “victory,” if it holds, isn’t much to crow about in a state with lopsided Democratic margins. The governor pushed hard for its passage — and predicted an overwhelming victory — and proponents spent $20 million to promote it. It garnered only modest opposition. Even if the measure ekes out a win, the results are an embarrassment for Newsom.

This editorial board strongly opposed the measure. We agree the state needs to do more about the homelessness crisis, but it needs to do the right things. We strongly support the governor’s CARE court proposal, which would “sentence” offenders with mental-health and addictions to treatment rather than prison. But Proposition 1 triggers a spending spree on the wrong things.

We complained the measure “robs counties of mental health services funding and saddles taxpayers with $6.38 billion in debt for what amounts to a bloated version of Project Roomkey and L.A.’s Measure HHH.” It takes money from locally run programs that have been modestly successful and provides the state, which fails at most of its tasks, with additional power and money.

Furthermore, those Los Angeles programs have funded permanent housing for the homeless, but those projects cost $800,000 or more a unit. The state will never reduce its growing numbers of homeless people at that cost and pace. Recent news reports, in fact, show that privately funded developments are far more successful at building affordable-housing units.

“By forgoing government assistance and the many regulations and requirements that come with it, SDS Capital Group said the 49-unit apartment building it is financing in South Los Angeles will cost about $291,000 a unit to build,” according to a recent Wall Street Journal report about the failure of state incentives to significantly boost the supply of housing for the poor. Instead of learning that lesson, the governor wants to throw more money at the problem.

As usual in California, the problem isn’t money as much as philosophy. California has embraced a “Housing First” approach toward homelessness, which prioritizes building permanent housing without requiring recipients to receive treatment for the problems that often landed them on the street. It views homelessness mainly as a housing issue rather than a social problem that’s exacerbated by California’s outlandish housing costs.

Unfortunately, Prop. 1 doubles down on that failed approach. From a political perspective, Newsom has used the measure to burnish his credentials on the national stage — something that has led to widespread criticism. The initiative’s meager showing doesn’t bode well for him. “The governor really put himself out there on this in the final weeks. It didn’t have the intended effect,” pollster Mark Baldassare told Politico.

We’ll see what Newsom has to say about it when he reschedules his big talk, but there’s no way to spin this as anything other than a political loss.