$236 Million Later: 22 People Helped

The numbers are staggering. Governor Newsom’s $236 million mental health program has helped exactly 22 people over four years. That’s $10.7 million per person. Meanwhile, 40,000 Californians have died from overdoses and homelessness grew 31%.

Archived tweet

Governor Gavin Newsom’s $236M program for California’s mentally ill has helped just 22 people in four years: report https://t.co/hDKl0PX8Fq https://t.co/QUundto6JI

New York Post @nypost January 27, 2026

So what’s actually going wrong? Armand Domalewski, co-host of the Pie for Everybody podcast, dug into the story and landed on a damning conclusion:

Archived tweet

if you read the article it seems that the issue is that CA judges are still in the 60s hippie libertarian ethos that deeply resists any sort of involuntary mental health treatment, even if people are literally dying in the streets https://t.co/zB3bGs7Mu7

Armand Domalewski @ArmandDoma January 27, 2026

This isn’t just bureaucratic incompetence—though there’s plenty of that. It’s ideological capture at the judicial level. California’s judges operate on what the SF Chronicle calls “trust and hope” rather than evidence-based risk assessment. They’re overly credulous with parolees who end up in facilities not equipped to handle severe mental illness.

The broader picture is even worse. California has spent between $24-37 billion on homelessness since 2019. The result? Homelessness grew 31% and 40,000 people died of overdoses. That’s not a policy failure—that’s a catastrophe.

And it gets more absurd. In 2016, SB1380 rewrote state code to require all publicly funded permanent supportive housing to allow unlimited drug use, effectively banning funding for sober housing options. So we won’t force treatment, we won’t fund recovery, and we’re shocked when people keep dying.

The broken ideology has become so entrenched that even the judges don’t uphold the laws. There’s a bureaucratic system that fails the people it claims to serve while spending billions. The judges need to be replaced. The policies need to change. And Californians need to demand accountability for the billions wasted while our neighbors die on the streets.

Follow @garrytan for more.