New mental health courts haven’t helped as many people as Newsom promised. Here’s why

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Gov. Gavin Newsom on a March day three years ago and proposed a new solution to one of the state’s most difficult problems: How to help the thousands of Californians sleeping on the streets while suffering from .

After all, he said, everything the state has done before has failed. One of the state’s prior attempts — a treatment referral program called – during the 2018-19 fiscal year, he said.

“That certainly is not demonstrable progress,” . His new program would be different.

But in the nearly two years since Newsom launched CARE Court, it has reached only a few hundred people. That’s barely more than the law he criticized, and certainly not the thousands he promised.

CalMatters requested CARE Court data from ever