Toni Navarro, director of the county’s department of Behavioral Wellness, confirmed that plans are underway to submit funding plans to build a bigger, brand-new Psychiatric Health Facility (PHF) to the state the second week in December. If the plans are approved, the county’s PHF— where people deemed a sufficient risk to themselves or others can be placed on involuntary holds — will increase in size from 16 beds to 24.
However ephemeral that sounds, it is historic. The shortage of PHF beds has been the subject of grand jury reports dating back more than 30 years. Santa Barbara is the only county in all of California’s 58 in which law enforcement agencies do not write 5150 holds — for those who pose a risk to themselves or others — because of its acute shortage of acute-care treatment beds. The existing PHF is sufficiently small that only two additional beds could be added.
Making this possible, according to Navarro, is the $1 billion in mental health funds made available from Proposition 1, narrowly approved last November by state voters to address the mental-health crisis afflicting many unhoused people. On any given day, Navarro said, up to three Santa Barbara residents are transported to acute-care mental-health hospitals in other counties because of the shortage.
Navarro added that the demand for PHF bed space — already pinched — could easily increase by more than 50 percent in the next couple of years as the county complies with a new state law — Senate Bill 43 — requiring local governments to take people on the street with acute addiction issues and place them in involuntary treatment centers. Navarro said the plan is to increase not just capacity but flow for a growing population of people in crisis.
Also to be included in the proposal for state funding will be plans for two residential stepdown facilities for people in crisis getting out of the new and expanded PHF. How much all this will cost, she said, has yet to be worked out. Those details will all be included in the proposal submitted to the state for Prop. 1 revenues no later than December 13.
