Q: My county's mental health services changed in July. What happened?

A: The Behavioral Health Services Act became operative on 1 July 2026, six weeks before this page was written.¹ It replaces the spending rules of the Mental Health Services Act — the 2004 measure funded by the 1% tax on income over a million dollars — and it was approved by voters as Proposition 1 in March 2024 by 50.2% to 49.8%, a margin of 26,223 votes.² Every county is now operating under a new three-year integrated plan covering 2026 through 2029.³

What changed in the money, exactly. Counties must now spend their allocation in three fixed buckets: 30% on housing interventions — half of that for people who are chronically homeless, "with a focus on those in encampments," and no more than a quarter of it on capital projects; 35% on full-service partnerships, the intensive wraparound programmes; and 35% on behavioral health services and supports, of which at least 51% must go to early intervention and at least 51% of that to people 25 and younger.⁴ A county can shift up to 14% between buckets with state approval, and cannot cut any one bucket by more than 7%.⁵

Substance use is funded for the first time. The act explicitly allows these programmes to include substance use disorder treatment, defines the qualifying condition as at least one moderate or severe substance use disorder diagnosis, and makes someone eligible on that basis whether or not they also have a mental illness.⁶ Counties providing that treatment must offer all FDA-approved medications for addiction treatment, and may assess and treat someone before a diagnosis is confirmed.⁶ One limit worth knowing: providing the housing interventions to someone whose only qualifying condition is a substance use disorder is optional for counties.⁶

You do not need Medi-Cal. The statute says so twice, for youth and for adults: eligible people "are not required to be enrolled in the Medi-Cal program," and housing interventions "shall not be limited to individuals enrolled in Medi-Cal."⁷ Priority goes to people who are homeless or at risk of it, in or leaving the justice system, at risk of conservatorship, or at risk of institutionalisation — and for children, those in the child welfare system.⁸

What got smaller, stated honestly. Under the old rules, 20% of a county's allocation was reserved for prevention and early intervention, and a separate 5% for innovation. Now there is no county prevention set-aside at all — the county floor is early intervention only, working out to a minimum of about 17.85% of the allocation — and the dedicated innovation share is gone, folded into the 35% bucket with no floor.⁹ Population-level prevention moved to the state: a minimum of 4% of the state's share now goes to the Department of Public Health for prevention programmes, more than half of it for people 25 and younger, and that money expressly cannot be spent on treating individuals.⁹

Two things Proposition 1 did not do. It did not create or expand any power to detain or treat anyone involuntarily — nothing in either bill touches conservatorship or commitment law.¹⁰ The laws people are thinking of are different and were never on a ballot: SB 43, which widened the definition of "gravely disabled" in 2023, and the CARE Act, passed in 2022.¹⁰ What those actually do → And the widely quoted bed counts — 6,800 treatment beds, 4,350 housing units — are the state health department's projections for the $6.38 billion bond, not numbers written into the law.¹¹

Do this: if a county programme you used has changed or closed, the plan behind it is a public document. Ask your county behavioral health department for its 2026–2029 integrated plan, or look for it through the state's integrated plans page. You have a real say in the next one: a draft plan must be circulated for at least 30 days of public comment, your county behavioral health board must hold a public hearing at the close of it, and the county must summarise the recommendations it received and explain in writing the substantive ones it did not adopt.¹² Between three-year plans, updates get a 30-day website comment window instead of a hearing.¹² Your county's line and page →

Sources

  1. Welfare & Institutions Code §5892(l) and the parallel operative clauses in §§5891, 5891.5, 5830, 5840, 5963.02 and 5963.04 — each becomes "operative on July 1, 2026, if amendments to the Mental Health Services Act are approved by the voters at the March 5, 2024, statewide primary election." The prior version of §5892 became inoperative the same day. Department of Health Care Services Behavioral Health Information Notice 26-024 (7 July 2026) confirms the MHSA regulations were superseded on 1 July 2026 by the BHSA County Policy Manual — dhcs.ca.gov.
  2. SB 326 (Stats. 2023, Ch. 790) and AB 531 (Stats. 2023, Ch. 789), approved as Proposition 1 at the 5 March 2024 primary. Certified result: 3,636,734 yes (50.2%) to 3,610,511 no (49.8%) — California Secretary of State, Official Declaration of the Vote Results for the State Ballot Measure — sos.ca.gov.
  3. Welfare & Institutions Code §5963.02(a) and §5892(a)(1)(B), which references the 2026–29 integrated plan as the first cycle; DHCS BHSA County Policy Manual, which set a 31 March 2026 draft and 30 June 2026 final deadline for plans effective 1 July 2026 — dhcs.ca.gov.
  4. Welfare & Institutions Code §5892(a)(1)(A)(i)–(iii), (a)(2)(A) and (a)(3)(A)–(B) — leginfo.legislature.ca.gov. Note there is no permanent-supportive-housing set-aside in the county split; the permanent supportive housing money is in the separate bond act.
  5. Welfare & Institutions Code §5892(c)(1)–(4) — transfers require departmental approval and are deemed approved if the department does not respond within 30 days.
  6. Welfare & Institutions Code §5891.5(a)(1)–(4) and (c)(1)–(2), and §5892(k)(7)(A), (k)(8)(A) — leginfo.legislature.ca.gov. The optional-housing limit is at §5891.5(a)(2).
  7. Welfare & Institutions Code §5892(k)(7)(B) and (k)(8)(B); §5830(a)(3). Housing interventions must also comply with the core components of Housing First and may not discriminate against people using medications for addiction treatment (§5830(a)(4)–(5)).
  8. Welfare & Institutions Code §5892(d)(1)–(2) and (a)(5).
  9. Compare the pre-BHSA §5892(a)(1) (20% prevention and early intervention) and (a)(4) (5% innovation), both inoperative from 1 July 2026, with the current §5892(a)(3)(B)(i) (at least 51% of the 35% bucket for early intervention) and §5892(f)(1)(E) (a minimum of 4% of the state's set-aside to the Department of Public Health for population-based prevention, at least 51% of it for people 25 and younger, and expressly not for individual treatment). Part 3.6 was rewritten by §5840, which now describes an early intervention programme.
  10. We read the operative text of §§5830, 5840, 5887, 5891, 5891.5, 5892, 5963.02, 5963.03 and 5963.04 and found no provision creating or expanding involuntary detention, conservatorship or court-ordered treatment. The measures commonly conflated with Proposition 1 are SB 43 (Stats. 2023, Ch. 637), which amended the definition of "gravely disabled" at §5008(h), and the CARE Act (SB 1338, Stats. 2022, Ch. 319), at §5970 et seq. Neither was on a ballot.
  11. Welfare & Institutions Code §5965.05(a)(1) authorises "six billion three hundred eighty million dollars ($6,380,000,000)"; §5965.04(b) allocates it. The bed and unit counts are Department of Health Care Services estimates, not statutory figures — dhcs.ca.gov.
  12. Welfare & Institutions Code §5963.03(a)(2)(B), (b)(1)–(5) and (c)(2) — leginfo.legislature.ca.gov.

All sections read on the operative text on 17 August 2026 — note that several of these sections currently have more than one version in the code with different operative dates. Counties file their first outcomes and transparency report in draft on 30 January 2028, so there is no BHSA-era performance data to look at yet.

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