California does not run mental health from Sacramento. It runs it through 58 counties, which is why "call your county" is such maddening advice — the answer genuinely differs depending on which side of a line you live on. On 1 July 2026, the rules governing what those counties must spend money on changed more than they have in twenty years, and almost nobody has explained it to the people who use the services.

This is that explanation. It is long because the accurate version is not short, and because both the enthusiastic and the alarmed accounts of this law are wrong in specific, checkable ways.

What actually happened

Proposition 1 was a package of two bills the Legislature put on the March 2024 primary ballot: SB 326, which rewrote the Mental Health Services Act into the Behavioral Health Services Act, and AB 531, a construction bond.¹

It passed by 50.2% to 49.8% — a margin of 26,223 votes out of more than seven million cast.² Anyone describing this as a mandate is describing something that did not happen.

The spending rules did not take effect on passage. Nearly every operative section carries the same clause — it "shall become operative on July 1, 2026" — and on that date the old spending rules went inoperative.³ Counties spent 2025 and early 2026 writing new three-year plans, due in draft on 31 March 2026 and final on 30 June 2026, covering 2026 through 2029.⁴ In July the state health department confirmed the switch: the old Mental Health Services Act regulations are "superseded, effective July 1, 2026," by a new county policy manual that will be the authoritative source until 2033.⁵

Where the money comes from — and what Proposition 1 did not do

The funding is a 1% tax on personal income above one million dollars, and it was created by Proposition 63 in 2004, not by Proposition 1.⁶ That is worth being precise about, because it frames everything else: Proposition 1 did not raise new money for county mental health. It redirected money that already existed and increased the share the state keeps.

The new arithmetic

Under the old act, counties had broad discretion with a 20% carve-out for prevention and early intervention and 5% for innovation. Now the statute divides a county's allocation three ways:⁷

30% — housing interventions. Of that, half must serve people who are chronically homeless, "with a focus on those in encampments," and no more than a quarter may go to capital development — bricks rather than rent.

35% — full-service partnerships. These are the intensive, wraparound programmes for people with the most serious conditions. Note a detail that surprises people: housing provided to someone in a full-service partnership is paid out of the 30% housing bucket, not this one.

35% — behavioral health services and supports. This is the general bucket: children's and adult systems of care, early intervention, outreach, workforce, facilities, and innovation. Inside it, at least 51% must go to early intervention, and at least 51% of that must serve people 25 and younger.

A county can move up to 14% between the buckets, and cannot cut any single bucket by more than 7%. Those shifts need state approval, and are deemed approved if the state does not respond within 30 days.⁸

There is also a ceiling on the state: no more than 10% of the fund may go to state-directed costs, with minimums carved out inside it for a workforce initiative and for public-health prevention.⁹

Three things that are genuinely new

Substance use disorder is funded on its own. The old act was a mental health act. The new one says programmes "may include substance use disorder treatment services," defines the qualifying condition as at least one moderate or severe substance use disorder diagnosis, and — this is the part that matters — makes a person eligible on that basis whether or not they also have a mental illness.¹⁰ Counties providing that treatment must offer all FDA-approved medications for addiction treatment, and may assess and treat someone before a diagnosis is confirmed.¹⁰

One limit to know before you ask: providing the housing interventions to someone whose only qualifying condition is a substance use disorder is optional for counties.¹⁰

You do not need Medi-Cal. The statute says it twice, once for youth and once for adults — eligible people "are not required to be enrolled in the Medi-Cal program" — and separately that housing interventions "shall not be limited to individuals enrolled in Medi-Cal."¹¹ If a county tells you otherwise, that sentence is the one to quote.

Priority populations are written into law. Counties must prioritise people who are chronically homeless, homeless or at risk of it; in or at risk of entering the justice system; reentering from prison or jail; at risk of conservatorship; or at risk of institutionalisation. For children and youth, add involvement in the child welfare system. Programmes must also address the needs of children aged 0 to 5, transition-age youth, and foster youth.¹²

Housing money comes with rules attached: it must comply with the core components of Housing First, and it may not discriminate against or deny housing to people using medications for addiction treatment.¹³ The 30% cannot be spent on treatment services — it is housing money and must stay housing money.¹³

What got smaller — and the honest version, because both sides overstate this

Under the old act, 20% of a county's allocation was reserved for prevention and early intervention, and a separate 5% for innovation.

Under the new act there is no county prevention set-aside at all. The county floor is early intervention only: 51% of the 35% bucket, which works out to a minimum of about 17.85% of the allocation. The dedicated innovation share is gone entirely — innovation is now a permitted use inside the 35% with no floor under it.¹⁴

Population-level prevention did not disappear; it moved to the state. At least 4% of the state's share now goes to the Department of Public Health for population-based mental health and substance use prevention, with more than half for people 25 and younger — and that money expressly cannot be spent treating individuals.¹⁴

So: "Proposition 1 gutted prevention" is too strong, and "nothing changed for prevention" is false. What is true is that the county-level guarantee shrank, its focus narrowed from prevention to early intervention, and the broad prevention work moved to a state agency with a different set of tools.

The bond, and the numbers you should not repeat

AB 531 authorises $6,380,000,000 in bonds — the statutory figure, not the "$6.4 billion" everyone rounds it to.¹⁵ The statute allocates it precisely: about $1.065 billion for permanent supportive housing for homeless veterans, $922 million for permanent supportive housing for others with a behavioral health condition, $1.5 billion in grants restricted to cities, counties and tribal entities, and up to $2.893 billion for treatment facility construction.¹⁵

You will see counts attached to this — roughly 6,800 treatment beds, 4,350 housing units. Those are the state health department's projections. They appear nowhere in the statute, which allocates dollars rather than beds.¹⁶ Cite them as estimates or not at all.

What Proposition 1 did not do — and the two laws people confuse it with

We read the operative text of every substantive section of the act. None of it creates or expands any authority to detain, commit, or treat anyone against their will. The only place involuntary process appears is as a priority category for voluntary services — people "at risk of conservatorship."¹²

The measures people are actually thinking of are two other laws, neither of which was ever on a ballot:

  • SB 43 (2023) widened the definition of "gravely disabled" for involuntary holds and conservatorships to include severe substance use disorder, personal safety, and necessary medical care. Counties could defer it only until 1 January 2026, so it now applies statewide.¹⁷
  • The CARE Act (2022) created the civil court process that can order a county to deliver services — and which expressly cannot force anyone to take medication.¹⁷

What both of those actually allow, and who can start them →

How to use any of this

The plan behind your county's services is a public document, and you have a real say in the next one.

A draft plan must be circulated for at least 30 days of public comment, and your county behavioral health board must hold a public hearing at the close of that period. The adopted plan has to summarise and analyse the recommendations it received, and the county must explain in writing the substantive recommendations it chose not to adopt.¹⁸ Twenty-four categories of stakeholder must be at the table, including people with lived experience of homelessness, veterans, tribal representatives, labour, and — in larger counties — the five biggest cities.¹⁹

One asymmetry to plan around: that full process applies to the three-year plan. Annual and mid-cycle updates get only a website posting with a 30-day comment window, no hearing.¹⁸

Counties will also have to report annually on where the money went — allocations and expenditures by category, unspent and reserve funds, administrative costs, contracted services and their cost, services provided to people not covered by Medi-Cal, and disparity data by race, ethnicity, age and gender. The board of supervisors must attest that the report is complete and accurate, and the state must publish a statewide version.²⁰ The state can require corrective action, impose monetary sanctions, or withhold payments from a county that fails to allocate the money as required or skips the public process.²⁰

The catch on timing: the first of those reports, covering 2026–27, is not due in draft until 30 January 2028. There is no performance data on any of this yet, and anyone telling you it is working or failing is telling you a prediction.

Two things to watch

This is not an individual entitlement. The statute says a county is obliged to fund these programmes only with the money it receives from this fund, and that the sections do not obligate counties to use money from any other source.²¹ It shapes what is available; it does not create a service you can demand by name.

And the law has already changed since the vote. Voters approved the text of SB 326, but the Legislature has amended it since — most recently in June 2026 — and one significant provision is not live yet: a set of presumptive eligibility rules for full-service partnerships, covering people who are unsheltered, leaving jail or a long stay in a facility, or who have been detained under a 5150 five or more times in five years, takes effect 1 January 2027, along with a bar on excluding someone from a full-service partnership solely because their primary diagnosis is a substance use disorder.²² Do not ask for those yet. Do ask in January.

Do this: call your county behavioral health department and ask for two things by name — its 2026–2029 integrated plan, and the date of the next public comment period. If a service you relied on changed or ended this summer, the plan is where the reason is written down. And if you were told you need Medi-Cal to be served, you do not. Your county's line and page → · The short version of this page →

Sources

  1. SB 326 (Stats. 2023, Ch. 790) and AB 531 (Stats. 2023, Ch. 789), approved by the voters as Proposition 1 at the 5 March 2024 primary election. The Behavioral Health Services Act amends the Mental Health Services Act; the Behavioral Health Infrastructure Bond Act of 2024 is codified at Welfare & Institutions Code §5965 et seq.
  2. California Secretary of State, Official Declaration of the Vote Results for the State Ballot Measure — 3,636,734 yes (50.2%) to 3,610,511 no (49.8%) — sos.ca.gov. Results certified 12 April 2024; the SB 326 provisions took effect 17 April 2024.
  3. Welfare & Institutions Code §5892(l), and the parallel operative clauses at §§5891(k), 5891.5(e), 5830(g), 5840(g), 5963.02(f) and 5963.04(g) — each "shall become 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 on the same date.
  4. Welfare & Institutions Code §5963.02(a) and §5892(a)(1)(B), which names the 2026–29 integrated plan as the first cycle; Department of Health Care Services, Behavioral Health Services Act County Policy Manual — draft plans due 31 March 2026, final plans approved by the board of supervisors due 30 June 2026, effective 1 July 2026 — dhcs.ca.gov.
  5. Department of Health Care Services Behavioral Health Information Notice 26-024, 7 July 2026 — the Mental Health Services Act regulations are "superseded, effective July 1, 2026," by the county policy manual, which "will be the authoritative source until July 1st, 2033" — dhcs.ca.gov.
  6. Proposition 63 (2004) created the Mental Health Services Fund; the code still labels the part as added "November 2, 2004, by initiative Proposition 63."
  7. Welfare & Institutions Code §5892(a)(1)(A)(i)–(iii), (a)(2)(A) and (a)(3)(A)–(B) — leginfo.legislature.ca.gov. Note that there is no permanent supportive housing set-aside inside the county split; that money is in the separate bond.
  8. Welfare & Institutions Code §5892(c)(1)–(4).
  9. Welfare & Institutions Code §5892(f)(1)–(2).
  10. Welfare & Institutions Code §5891.5(a)(1)–(4) and (c)(1)–(2); eligibility through substance use disorder independently of mental illness at §5892(k)(7)(A) and (k)(8)(A); the optional-housing limit at §5891.5(a)(2) — leginfo.legislature.ca.gov.
  11. Welfare & Institutions Code §5892(k)(7)(B) and (k)(8)(B); §5830(a)(3).
  12. Welfare & Institutions Code §5892(d)(1)–(2) and (a)(5).
  13. Welfare & Institutions Code §5830(a)(4)–(5) and (b)(1)(I).
  14. 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) and §5892(f)(1)(E), the latter directing 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.
  15. Welfare & Institutions Code §5965.05(a)(1) — "six billion three hundred eighty million dollars ($6,380,000,000)" — and §5965.04(b), whose four allocations sum exactly to that figure.
  16. Department of Health Care Services, Proposition 1 fact sheet — the bed and unit counts are departmental estimates and appear nowhere in AB 531 — dhcs.ca.gov.
  17. SB 43 (Stats. 2023, Ch. 637), amending the definition of "gravely disabled" at Welfare & Institutions Code §5008(h), with county deferral available only until 1 January 2026 (§5008(h)(4)); the CARE Act, SB 1338 (Stats. 2022, Ch. 319), at §5970 et seq. Neither was a ballot measure.
  18. Welfare & Institutions Code §5963.03(a)(2)(B), (b)(1)–(5) and (c)(2) — leginfo.legislature.ca.gov.
  19. Welfare & Institutions Code §5963.03(a)(1) and (a)(2)(A)(ii).
  20. Welfare & Institutions Code §5963.04(a)(2), (c), (d) and (e); §5963.02(e) requires the state to post each county's integrated plan.
  21. Welfare & Institutions Code §5892(a)(6); §5830(f); §5887(i).
  22. Welfare & Institutions Code §5887 as repealed and re-added by AB 348 (Stats. 2025, Ch. 688), operative 1 January 2027, adding presumptive eligibility for full-service partnerships and providing that a person "shall not be deemed ineligible for enrollment in a full-service partnership solely because their primary diagnosis is a substance use disorder." The act has also been amended since the vote, most recently by SB 164 (Stats. 2026, Ch. 27), effective 29 June 2026.

Every provision above was read on the version of the statute operative on 17 August 2026. Several of these sections currently exist in the code in more than one version with different operative dates, so anyone checking this work should confirm which version they are reading. This page describes the law; it is not legal advice.

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