The Brief

In the fall of 2018, California’s voters were determined to make a dent in the state’s rapidly escalating homelessness crisis. By a wide margin, they supported a ballot measure sold as No Place Like Home, which promised to use taxpayer money earmarked for mental health treatment to pay for a $2 billion housing bond.

Voters who read the Yes campaign’s description of the measure that November saw a bold promise: 20,000 new units of permanent supportive housing.

More than five years later, the state has completed just 1,797 No Place Like Home units.

As Californians prepare to vote next month on Proposition 1, which includes another multi-billion dollar plan to build affordable housing with intensive services attached, the story of No Place Like Home may serve as something of a cautionary tale. It’s a case study of big promises, good intentions and urgent need caught in a tangle of NIMBYism and red tape.

Projects that would be funded by Prop. 1 — which, among other things, would issue $6.4 billion in bonds to pay for 4,350 units of supportive housing and 6,800 mental health treatment beds — could face some of the same hurdles that have delayed the construction of No Place Like Home units, developers and local officials say. Voters happy to agree with the concept of housing homeless people have killed proposals to build such housing in their own neighborhoods. Complicated financing rules and restrictions have delayed other projects, sometimes for years.

Meanwhile, since No Place Like Home passed, the state’s unhoused population has shot up by 40%, and is now estimated to include more than 181,000 Californians.

“Look what’s happening. We’re losing,” said Dr. Jonathan Sherin, former behavioral health director of Los Angeles County, who points not just to No Place Like Home, but to a couple of big Los Angeles ballot measures — Measure H in 2017 and Proposition HHH in 2016 — and now to Prop. 1.

“I’m not disparaging the people or their intentions,” he said. “The systems are antiquated. They’re archaic. They’re impossible to move quickly.”

Molly Weedn, a spokesperson for the Yes On Prop. 1 campaign, said in an email that the new measure would inject money into “proven, successful housing programs” and that there were provisions in the measure to speed up development.

No Place Like Home units are specifically for people with serious mental illnesses who are homeless; as part of the law, counties are required to provide the residents of these units with mental health and substance use treatment for a minimum of 20 years.

The pledge to use bond money to build 20,000 supportive housing units can be traced to a 2018 Legislative Analyst’s Office report, which estimated “half of the units would likely be completed within five years.” An analyst told CalMatters that estimate included other sources of affordable housing money, not just the $2 billion proposed by No Place Like Home. Key supporters of the measure who circulated the number widely in 2018 — and cited it in their arguments in the state’s official voter guide — did not return requests for comment.

Protesters Natalie Conrad and Debi Davis try to engage with pedestrians during a “Vote No on Prop. 1” protest on the west steps of the Capitol on Feb. 1, 2024.

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Fred Greaves

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CalMatters

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The California Department of Housing and Community Development, which administers the bond revenue, refused to make someone available for an on-the-record interview. Christina DiFrancesco, a program specialist for the department, said via email that the department developed an estimated number of units only after the ballot measure passed. That estimate is in line with the department’s current forecast that No Place Like Home money will wind up funding a total of 7,702 such units.

The developments that house these units are paid for with No Place Like Home funding and other types of federal, state and local funding. They generally contain a mix of No Place Like Home units and other sorts of affordable housing. So far, in addition to the permanent supportive housing units, No Place Like Home has indirectly supported the construction of an additional 2,332 affordable housing units, though these do not necessarily have services attached.

DiFrancesco said the department provides incentives to developers to start construction as soon as possible, and sets deadlines for lining up financing and for leasing units. All of the No Place Like Home funds have been disbursed to counties since 2022, department representatives said, and construction is picking up pace.

People who have been housed as a result of No Place Like Home have had their lives transformed.

But the urgency with which dollars have been turned into housing simply doesn’t match the reality of the pain and suffering of people living on the streets with severe mental illnesses, said Kevin de León, who carried the original No Place Like Home legislation when he served as the state’s Senate president pro tem.

“I feel that we’ve moved at a snail’s pace,” said de León, now a Los Angeles city council member. “We have to raise the bar because people are dying on the streets as we speak.”

A fateful trip to Skid Row

De León and Darrell Steinberg, who focused on mental health policy during his years in the Legislature and is now mayor of Sacramento, dreamed up No Place Like Home after a visit to Skid Row in 2015.

Their heads spinning after meeting with advocates, service providers and city officials, the two legislative powerhouses sat down in a café. They started sketching out a vision on a napkin: Could unspent state mental health revenue be used to construct and rehabilitate housing for people with severe mental illnesses?

Skid Row. (James Bernal for KPCC)

Steinberg had co-authored the Mental Health Services Act, a 1% tax on income over $1 million that voters passed in 2004 to improve the state’s struggling mental health system. He had been trying, unsuccessfully, for a decade to use some of that money for a housing bond, he said. In essence, the state would ask investors to loan the money upfront, then would use the Mental Health Services Act money to pay it off over time.

The proposal he and de León dreamed up in the café would prove controversial once they introduced it in early 2016 – some counties and mental health advocates opposed the idea of paying off a housing bond with funds designated for mental health services.

The Legislature that year was just awakening to the growing crisis on the streets, said Craig Cornett, the budget and finance director for the state Senate at the time, who helped craft the proposal to bring many early opponents on board. With strong bipartisan support, the Legislature passed No Place Like Home and then-Gov. Jerry Brown signed it in 2016.

“We will no longer turn a blind eye to the needless suffering that is so clearly displayed on our streets,” Steinberg said at the time.

That November attorney Mary Ann Bernard filed a lawsuit to stop the legislation, arguing that it would be illegal to divert the money to housing from treatment programs.

To avoid litigation, Brown and legislators put No Place Like Home on the ballot.

In November 2018, 63% of voters marked yes.

Challenge One: How to pay for mental health housing

 Today, Steinberg is measured in his critique of the rollout of the policy. He describes it as successful, “the right initiative” and “the right policy.”

But he agrees that speed obviously matters.

“The consistent frustration is the amount of time it takes to go from bold policy vision and new ideas to implementation,” he said. “We all want it to go faster. I certainly do.”

What, exactly, has taken so long?

The pandemic — which hit a little over a year after voters passed No Place Like Home — certainly didn’t help.

But many of the issues afflicting No Place Like Home predate the ballot measure.

“The problem isn’t No Place Like Home. The problem is how we finance and build affordable housing,” said Carolina Reid, faculty research adviser at the UC Berkeley Terner Center for Housing Innovation.

It’s not as simple as handing out cash: Lining up financing can take years.

No Place Like Home awards make up a fraction, sometimes just 10%, of the total cost to build an affordable housing project, developers say. That means a developer often needs to come up with another half-dozen funding sources from different city, county, state and federal programs

Complicating the issue further: the various funding streams aren’t always in sync, with different deadlines, different requirements, even different definitions of homelessness.

“It takes way too long, and it’s heartbreaking when you’re seeing people who are living in such horrible conditions,” said Andrea Osgood, chief of real estate development for Eden Housing.

Eden won $6 million from No Place Like Home in June 2022 to build a 72-unit affordable housing development in Castro Valley, south of Oakland. That was just 9% of the project’s total cost of $66 million. The developer had to compile the rest from six other sources. Construction started in June 2023; it is expected to be complete in early 2025.

Another challenge, Osgood notes: The cost of construction has gone up, sometimes jumping as much as 20% in a year. Insurance rates are climbing as well. As these costs increase, No Place Like Home funds get stretched thinner and can build fewer homes.

Even if Prop. 1 passes, a yawning $38 billion state budget deficit may create new problems, as proposed cuts to other affordable housing funding sources, such as the Multifamily Housing Program, could leave new financial holes. That might translate into even longer construction delays, Osgood said: “All of us are worried in the industry right now.”

Challenge Two: Where to build new housing

But finances aren’t the only problem. Developers and county officials say they frequently run into resistance when they try to find a place to build permanent supportive housing units.

In part, developers blame California’s Environmental Quality Act, an environmental law that allows concerned citizens to sue to delay —or even stop— proposed housing developments.

Two of the 10 No Place Like Home projects proposed by Eden Housing were hit with such lawsuits, Osgood said. One, in downtown Livermore, won nearly $6.5 million from No Place Like Home back in June 2022. Litigation is ongoing; the project still hasn’t broken ground.

Plain old NIMBYism — the acronym for “Not In My Backyard”— has sunk other projects.

“It was just local community concerns about the kinds of clients that we serve,” said Michelle Cabrera, executive director of the County Behavioral Health Directors Association.

Challenge Three: How to learn from it

Rosemary Balsley, 49, spent 14 years without a home of her own – first living in her car, then, after the engine died, couch surfing wherever someone would take her in.

In 2021, Balsley scored a roomy one-bedroom apartment on the third floor of a No Place Like Home project in East Palo Alto, and everything changed. A self-described neat freak, Balsley loves having her own space that she keeps smelling of Pine-Sol. She soaks in the tub to ease the pain of an old shoulder injury. And she welcomes guests – her older sister and a friend came over and threw her a small birthday party last month.

But it’s not just the roof and four walls that have made a difference for Balsley, who has several mental health diagnoses, including bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. She now has support staff to help her navigate apartment living. A counselor, who Balsley calls her “go-to girl,” calls regularly to check in and sometimes makes her food.

The combination of a home and supportive services has helped Balsley become someone she worried she’d never be: an independent woman. She’s managing her mental health well with medication, she’s paying her bills on time – including her $296 a month in rent – using her disability benefits, and she’s considering going back to school or looking for a job.

“I’m a part of the world now,” she said. “I don’t feel like an outcast.”

Supporters of Prop. 1 march at the state Capitol in Sacramento on Jan. 31, 2024.

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José Luis Villegas

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CalMatters

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The question, of course, is not whether such housing is valuable, but how California can build it faster.

The state is trying. Legislators have passed bills to speed up approval and remove land use and parking restrictions for certain apartment buildings that include low-income units.

Californians should start to see No Place Like Home projects move more quickly as those laws take effect, said Michael Lane, state policy director at the San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association.

“You need to have the land, you need to have the financing, but then you also have to have the political will to approve the projects,” he said. “We’ve made a lot of progress over the last few years, and we’ll begin to see the results of that.”

Sen. Susan Eggman, a Democrat from Stockton who authored part of Prop. 1, said the state has learned valuable lessons from No Place Like Home. She said Prop. 1 includes exemptions to California’s Environmental Quality Act to facilitate the development of supportive housing. It also requires more transparency: Counties will have to submit annual reports to the state outlining how money is spent.

“With No Place Like Home there wasn’t a lot of accountability from the communities,” Eggman said. “Now there will be measurements and outcomes to really be able to see what the community needs, what they have and what their plan is to make sure those resources are there.”

Should Prop. 1 pass, the Department of Health Care Services will split responsibility for distributing bond money with the state housing department. A representative of the health care services department said in an unsigned email that the initiative would authorize them to require corrective action plans or levy fines against counties that do not meet capacity and other annual performance goals.

Farrah McDaid Ting, director of public affairs for the California State Association of Counties, said she was initially skeptical about No Place Like Home. At the time, assuming it would pass regardless, she decided to help craft a legislative package that she and the counties she worked with could support. She considers the construction of more than 1,600 units so far “a huge achievement,” one she doubted would happen back when de León and Steinberg first floated their idea in 2016.

But when it comes to getting housing built faster, she said, “none of us”— not governors, not Senate leaders, not countless others —“nobody has been able to figure out how to make this stuff happen.”

“I definitely think it’s progress,” she said. “Whether it’s the best way to make progress, I don’t know.”

This story is no longer being actively updated. For the most up-to-date information about the fire you can check:

• LAFD incident page
• Latest evacuation map

Firefighters appeared to make quick progress against a brush fire the broke out Wednesday near the Getty Center.

As of 5 p.m., evacuation warnings had been issued for zones LFD-0895 and LF-0967, although the LAFD said no structures were immediately threatened as the water-dropping helicopters attacked the fire from above. Forward progress of the fire was reported stopped shortly after 6 p.m. at a little over 20 acres.

The fire broke out as Southern California endures high heat and record-breaking humidity.

The basics

• Acreage: 20+ acres as of Wednesday evening
• Containment: Forward progress stopped
• Structures destroyed: None reported
• Deaths: None
• Injuries: Unknown
• Personnel working on fire: Unknown

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A prominent attorney working on a low-level criminal case in Long Beach is alleging the Police Department there concealed an officer’s assault conviction for years — potentially calling into question the legitimacy of hundreds of cases.

Scott Sanders, who exposed the Orange County jailhouse snitch scandal, made the allegations in a series of motions filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court to force disclosure of police records and dismiss charges against Lonnie Jacobs, 47, his court-appointed client.

Jacobs is facing felony charges after Long Beach police said they found a small bag of cocaine tucked inside his sock while he was held at a jail following an arrest in March 2025. Jacobs has pleaded not guilty to the charge of bringing a controlled substance into a jail, which could carry a sentence of up to four years in prison.

At issue is the arrest that landed Jacobs in that cell in the first place — which Sanders argues in court filings was based on misrepresentations of now-former Long Beach police Officer Erik Suarez.

According to the defendant’s motion to dismiss, Suarez resigned from the Long Beach Police Department in June.

In a filing made Sept. 8, the defense attorney said an investigator discovered that Suarez had been convicted of a misdemeanor in the beating of a man outside a Waffle House in Marietta, Georgia in 2019. He had initially been charged with felony assault.

At that time, Suarez had served on the Long Beach force for two years.

LAist attempted to contact Suarez by calling a phone number connected to him in public records. A man who answered said he was not Suarez, but asked what the story was about and said he would check with Suarez about contacting LAist.

In a recent court filing seeking more information about Suarez’s conduct, Jacobs’ defense asserts that the Long Beach Police Department knew about the conviction, but never disclosed this information to defendants or the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office.

That’s information Jacobs’ attorney argues was potentially exculpatory, and that withholding it amounts to a major violation of criminal defense laws. In the landmark 1963 case Brady v. Maryland, the U.S. Supreme Court established that law enforcement has a legal responsibility to disclose such information to defendants. In Jacobs’ case, for example, the Sept. 8 filing said information about Suarez’s arrest and subsequent conviction could have been used to impeach him as a witness, as well as in other cases Suarez touched as a police officer.

The Long Beach Police Department has not yet responded to LAist’s emailed questions.

“The actions of the LBPD demonstrate a complete disregard to the danger Officer Suarez presented to the community and to the due process rights of defendants,” according to the motion to force disclosure. “The concealment of Officer Suarez's arrest and prosecution enabled [LBPD] to hide mandated discovery related to Officer Suarez’s conduct from what have likely been hundreds of defendants during the nearly seven-year period between the time of Officer Suarez’s August 2019 arrest and June 2026.”

Jacobs’ attorney alleges in the filing that Long Beach has an “unwritten policy” to keep information that could be used to impeach its officers in personnel files protected from public disclosure.

“The potential systemic consequences are enormous,” the filing argues.

Summer Lacey, the criminal justice and police practices director at the ACLU of Southern California, called the circumstances outlined in the case “very problematic.”

“Not just to the individual,” she said, “but to the entire community.”

Lacey said the information about Suarez’s conviction should have been known to the prosecutors, so they could vet the reliability of the evidence presented by law enforcement, and turned over to the defense at the outset of the case.

A spokesperson for L.A. County District Attorney Nathan Hochman said in an emailed response to questions that they could not comment on what information they disclosed to Jacobs’ defense.

The District Attorney’s Office said it has a “collaborative relationship with the Long Beach Police Department,” and that the department does disclose material to prosecutors that is allowed under California law.

“Generally speaking, if our office had any such Brady material regarding an officer, we would have been legally obligated to turn that over to the defense.”

Lacey said if prosecutors did not have access to Suarez’s criminal record, the scope of people affected could be wide.

“We don't know how many cases are impacted by the potential unreliability of statements from the arresting law enforcement officer,” Lacey said. “This could impact people who have already pled guilty, who maybe are currently incarcerated, who are awaiting sentencing, or who are, like I said, incarcerated pretrial on other cases.”

In an interview with LAist, Sanders said the case raises three troubling issues: There’s the concealment of evidence leading to Jacobs' initial arrest, Suarez’s 2019 assault that was never disclosed, and the question of whether the Long Beach Police Department has concealed Brady material in other cases.

“If that's your modus operandi, we've got an enormous problem here,” Sanders said.

The underlying arrest that led to allegations about concealing an assault 

Long Beach police responded to the intersection of 52nd Street and Atlantic Boulevard after a man reported being held at gunpoint, with the robber driving away in the van he was repossessing.

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Megan Garvey

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LAist

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Just after 7:45 p.m. on March 18, 2025, Suarez and his partner Dylan Kelley responded to a call reporting a person with a gun at the intersection of 52nd Street and Atlantic Boulevard in Long Beach.

The alleged victim, identified in the filing by his last name, Ochoa, told the officers that he was attempting to repossess a black Dodge Sprinter van when someone threatened him with a gun, took the keys and drove off with the van.

Police later tracked down the van and detained Lonnie Jacobs and his brother, Lamar Jacobs.

According to court records, at the scene officers only presented Lonnie Jacobs to Ochoa.

Before seeing him, Ochoa stated that the suspect had braids, and body camera footage detailed in the court filing shows him gesturing to show long hair around his shoulders.

While looking at photos of the suspects in the van, Ochoa identified Lamar Jacobs. “That’s him! With the dreads!,” Ochoa is recorded saying on body camera footage.

Body camera footage shows Suarez confirming this description. “You said he had dreads? Can you remember if he has dreads?,” Suarez asks. The footage shows Ochoa nodding to confirm.

But Ochoa then identified Lonnie Jacobs in person, telling officers he recognized Lonnie Jacobs’ chain and ripped jeans as matching the person who pulled a gun on him earlier that night.

Jacobs’ court filings state that body camera footage shows both he and his brother wore the exact same chain, and they both wore ripped jeans that night.

In an interview with a detective for the District Attorney’s Office in August 2026 that is included in court filings, Ochoa said he was positive he identified a man with braids during the show-up.

Lonnie Jacobs is bald.

Lonnie Jacobs in a still from a police body cam on the night of his arrest.

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Long Beach Police Department

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L.A. County Superior Court filing

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Lamar Jacobs in a still from the night his brother was arrested. An officer is handing him a chain identical to one around his neck.

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Long Beach Police Department

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L.A. County Superior Court filing

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His attorney argued this fact is inconsistent with the description and should have disqualified Jacobs as a suspect, or at least warranted more questioning. Furthermore, he alleges Suarez failed to correct another officer at the scene who questioned why Ochoa didn’t see the hairstyle of the man who allegedly pulled a gun on him.

By this point, Ochoa had already described the suspect as having braids to Suarez and Kelley, according to the body cam footage, but Suarez did not correct the other officer.

“He couldn’t tell by the haircut,” Suarez said, adding he said “everything happened too fast.”

Jacobs’ defense alleges Suarez’s response was “actively misleading his fellow officers.”

Furthermore, body camera footage also shows Suarez agreeing with another officer who expressed doubts that Lonnie Jacobs was the one who brandished the firearm.

A still of officers discussing the potential suspects on the night of Lonnie Jacobs' arrest. A court filing by his defense said officers, including Erik Suarez, expressed doubts that he was the correct person.

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Long Beach Police Department

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L.A. County Superior Court

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“Yeah I think it was him, too,” Suarez said, referring to Lonnie’s brother Lamar. Lamar Jacobs was never charged in connection with the case.

In filings to the court, the District Attorney’s Office said the officers had probable cause to arrest Jacobs because he was in the van described by the witness and matched at least some of the characteristics of the suspect.

How that led to the Georgia case coming to light

Once Jacobs’ defense reviewed the body cam footage, they began attempting to depose Suarez in the case. Although Lonnie Jacobs was never charged with threatening Ochoa, the arrest led to the charges of bringing drugs into a jail. If the initial arrest was illegitimate, the drug case would go away.

The court scheduled a hearing earlier this year to discuss the evidence, but the Long Beach Police Department told Jacobs’ defense that Suarez was out of the country.

The defense subpoenaed Suarez through the Police Department again and on June 15, the department told the team that Suarez had resigned.

An investigator for Jacobs’ defense searched for his address to subpoena him at home. That search, according to the court filing, uncovered the assault charges in Georgia in 2019, two years after he joined the police force in Long Beach.

In the motion to dismiss the charges against Jacobs, his defense argues it is “plausible” that Suarez resigned from the police force out of concern he may have been questioned about his alleged misconduct that led to Jacobs’ arrest.

“However, it is also now apparent that Officer Suarez has been living with another secret that may also have propelled a decision to abandon his police officer position,” the defense wrote.

Through discovery, Jacobs’ attorney said in court filings they learned that Suarez had traveled to Georgia where he watched the Atlanta Braves beat the Los Angeles Dodgers 4-3 on Aug. 17, 2019.

According to an incident report attached to court filings, a witness saw Suarez wearing a Dodgers jersey in a Waffle House, “talking shit” and arguing with the victim.

“Suarez then walked up to the table where the victim was seated and began punching him in the face until the victim was left unconscious on the ground,” the filing describes. According to the incident report and other filings from that case, Suarez continued to punch the victim while he was unconscious.

The most recent filing from Jacobs’ defense says Suarez was arrested walking away from the restaurant.

According to a description of the crime by Barry Morgan, a Cobb County assistant solicitor general, Suarez “caused the victim significant injuries, including orbital fracture, fracture of the maxillary sinus, traumatic orbital hematoma, and concussion.”

A memo details injuries caused by Erik Suarez in a 2019 assault. A grand jury indicted him on two felony counts. He later pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor and served a year of probation.

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Cobb County Superior Court

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via L.A. County Superior Court filing

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“Defendant beat the victim while the victim was on the ground, apparently unconscious,” the description explains. “This should be aggravated battery.”

On April 1, 2021, a grand jury indicted Suarez on two felony counts of aggravated battery, accusing him of “seriously disfiguring” the victim and rendering his right eye useless.

Right before trial, Suarez pleaded guilty in November 2022 to reduced misdemeanor charges of battery, was ordered to stay away from the victim and Cobb County, and was ordered to take anger management classes. He was sentenced to 12 months, which he was allowed to serve on probation.

According to Jacobs’ defense, “Suarez’s actions in Georgia triggered immediate reporting responsibilities related to his employment” with the Long Beach Police Department.

The court filing explains that the Long Beach police manual requires officers to inform their watch commander when they are arrested by another department or under a criminal investigation.

It’s not yet clear when the department learned about Suarez’s arrest. But Jacobs' defense argues that if the department learned of the arrest between 2019 and 2026, “this would have clearly triggered Brady responsibilities in this case and numerous others.”

That information is relevant to the case against Jacobs, the filing argues, because “it is entirely logical that the same officer who beat a victim into unconsciousness and then cavalierly walked from the scene would just as thoughtlessly arrest a man for whom no probable cause existed — concealing that the victim previously identified another suspect who possessed features irreconcilable with the defendant’s culpability.”

When does law enforcement need to disclose misconduct? 

While law enforcement has a legal requirement to proactively disclose Brady material that could help defendants build their case, California law exempts most police personnel records from disclosure, except under certain circumstances including findings of unnecessary use of force and misconduct while on the job.

Jacobs’ defense attorney, in the Sept. 8 filing, alleges Long Beach police purposefully placed evidence related to Suarez’s conviction in his personnel file, where it could be protected from disclosure.

He wrote this “enabled the agency to hide mandated discovery related to Officer Suarez’s conduct from what have likely been hundreds of defendants during the nearly seven-year period between the time of Officer Suarez’s August 2019 arrest and June 2026.”

Furthermore, the filing argues “there is every reason to believe that the hiding of Brady evidence extends far beyond Officer Suarez’s conduct and is the product of a long-established undisclosed policy designed to conceal Brady evidence.”

The filing points to a June 2021 news article wherein a spokesperson for the LBPD told reporters that it does not maintain a formal list of officers whose case involvement triggers Brady disclosures, but that it “continues to comply with its obligations to share such information.”

By that time, Suarez’s assault case was nearly two years old and, according to Jacobs’ defense, had never been disclosed.