It was once a certainty that Newsom’s homelessness measure would hardly pass

A key part of California’s strategy to tackle the homelessness crisis was narrowly approved by state voters, the Associated Press noted Wednesday, by a stunningly narrow margin that kept Democrats on edge for more than two weeks.

The measure, known as Proposition 1, includes a $6.4 billion bond to fund treatment and housing for homeless people with serious mental illness and addictions. Last year, when Gov. Gavin Newsom and a bipartisan group of California lawmakers placed Proposition 1 on the spring ballot, early polls suggested it would happen easily.

Its adoption was taken so naturally that most voters and political donors were barely aware that opposition existed. But after the March 5 election, it took 15 days after ballots were counted for The Associated Press to determine the measure had passed.

The count took so long that Mr. Newsom decided to postpone his annual State of the State address, originally scheduled for Monday, because his speech had wanted to celebrate Proposition 1 and highlight his efforts on homelessness and mental wanted to emphasize health.

On Wednesday, the governor called the victory less a close call than a courageous choice by Californians who were frustrated with it years with the magnitude of the state’s homelessness problem.

“This is the biggest change in decades in the way California addresses homelessness, and a victory for doing things radically differently,” Newsom said in a statement. “The passage of Proposition 1 means we can begin to repair the damage caused by decades of broken promises and political neglect of people suffering from serious mental illness.”

California has seen more people living on the streets since the coronavirus pandemic began four years ago, and residents have repeatedly cited homelessness as one of the state’s top concerns.

However, returns on Wednesday showed the measure was on track, with only 50.2 percent of voters approving it. The difference was less than 30,000 votes out of more than 7 million votes cast in the race. Outside of heavily Democratic cities, which have been most affected by encampments, approval was lower than expected.

“The Bay Area, Los Angeles and part of the North Coast supported it,” said Mark Baldassare, polling director at the Public Policy Institute of California, who is writing a book on voting measures in California. “But much of the state did not.”

There were several theories about why Newsom and Democrats had struggled to gain support for the measure. A growing budget gap of tens of billions of dollars could have prevented voters from approving more spending. This is evident from an opinion poll conducted in January According to the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, 54 percent of likely voters characterized the state’s deficit as “extremely serious.”

Mr. Newsom scheduled Proposition 1 for the primaries to avoid competition with other measures in November, when the vote is typically more crowded. But primaries tend to draw a more conservative electorate with fewer voters, especially when there is no competitive presidential or gubernatorial race at the top, and polls show Republicans overwhelmingly opposed to Proposition 1.

Only about a third of registered voters cast ballots in California’s primary, and Republicans made up about 31 percent, despite making up less than a quarter of registered voters.

“This was pure turnout, which we knew would be low, but no one could have predicted it would be this low,” said David Townsend, a Sacramento political consultant whose specialties include bonds.

A related theory was that the Democratic establishment nearly foiled itself by spending tens of millions of dollars on ads promoting Steve Garvey as the “too conservative” Republican candidate in the Senate primary to succeed the late Dianne Feinstein. By doing so, they created an easier path for Representative Adam Schiff to win the seat in November, but also risked more voters showing up who could reject a key priority for Mr. Newsom.

Paul Mitchell, a Democratic political consultant and political data expert, said some parts of the Garvey vote in the exit polls he conducted had cited the Senate race as the main reason for casting a vote. Overall, he said, they represented only a small portion of the electorate, but they could have helped make the Proposition 1 outcome closer than it would have been.

Mr. Baldassare said it was more likely that voters had been confused by a ballot measure that addressed complex social and psychological issues. “The default for voters is to always vote no if they don’t understand an issue,” he said.

Moreover, he said, the campaign for Proposition 1, with more than $13.6 million in television and online advertising, was dominated not by mental health professionals or frustrated inner-city business owners, but by Mr. Newsom, whose endorsement in California is high. dropped below 50 percent for the first time in almost five years.

With the results still undecided more than a week after Election Day, Mr. Newsom began looking for volunteers to help voters whose ballots were not counted because their mail-in signatures did not match those on file. Under California law, these voters are supposed to be notified of a discrepancy and have the opportunity to fill out a form to have their ballots counted.

Democrats and Republicans have previously taken similar actions in smaller races, but such efforts are rare in statewide contests involving millions of ballots.

Mr. Newsom made homelessness a signature priority when he first became governor in 2019. Public concern grew during the pandemic as downtown tent encampments proliferated in Los Angeles, San Francisco and other cities emptied by lockdowns.

California’s Democratic leadership is under intense pressure to remove the encampments, even as rising housing costs and an influx of fentanyl have worsened urban homelessness. Proposal 1 was designed to address one of the thorniest aspects of the problem: serious mental illness and addiction.

The state has already pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into housing people in hotels and motels. Proposition 1 will further expand that program and fund approximately 11,000 treatment beds and housing units with health and social services for homeless people with mental illness and addictions.

Most of the money would be raised by borrowing, through the bond measure, with an additional $140 million per year coming from an existing state tax on millionaires. Finally countedMore than 180,000 people were homeless in California.

a broad study A study published last summer by the Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative at the University of California, San Francisco, found that about two-thirds of homeless people interviewed had serious symptoms of mental illness, but only about 18 percent had recently received treatment. Like many states, California has that too an acute shortage of psychiatric treatment beds for adults.

California also needs more subsidized inpatient options for people with substance use disorders. And the state has some of the nation’s strongest civil rights protections for people with mental illness.

Some of California’s largest advocacy groups contributed to Mr. Newsom’s campaign in support of the measure. State records show Proposition 1 has raised more than $15.7 million, with a donor list that included a Bay Area tribe, labor unions, builders, health care providers, Uber and the California Chamber of Commerce. The only organized opposition collected only about $1,000.

Still, there were concerns. Some counties and smaller mental health organizations argued that diverting mental health money to the homeless could cut funding for local programs that serve people of color, LGBTQ communities and other groups.

And civil liberties groups argued that Proposition 1 would lead to more involuntary treatment. Last year, Mr. Newsom signed legislation that would allow for more conservatories. This year, the state introduced a program that allows courts to force people with serious, untreated mental illness into treatment. Proposal 1 will help underwrite that court program, known as CARE Court.

In a statement days before The Associated Press called the race, Californians Against Prop said. 1, a coalition of civil rights groups, people with disabilities and local mental health programs, that the measure “could be a humanitarian disaster if not properly managed.”

“The incredibly narrow passage of Prop. 1 is for voters to say, ‘Don’t let that happen,’” the coalition said.