SACRAMENTO — Gov. Gavin Newsom called Wednesday for California to strengthen conservatorship laws, exempt housing construction for homeless people from long-standing environmental regulations and redirect hundreds of millions of dollars for mental health services to tackle the “disgrace” of homelessness in the state.

Newsom focused his second annual State of the State address almost entirely on one topic — homelessness — an unusual move that reflected his intention to move the issue to “the top of our agenda.”

“The hard truth is for too long we ignored this problem,” the governor said. “Most of us have experienced homelessness as a pang of guilt, not a call to action.”

With the homeless population surging by double-digit percentages in many cities across the state, Newsom is under increasing pressure to act. Homelessness has become the biggest issue to Californians, recent polls show, and Newsom said that he, like the public, has “lost patience.”

“Let’s call it what it is: It’s a disgrace,” he said, “that the richest state in the richest nation, succeeding across so many sectors, is falling so far behind to properly house, heal and humanely treat so many of its own people.”

Perhaps his most controversial proposal is to expand the ability of counties to compel people to receive mental health treatment. He cited a recently launched pilot program in San Francisco as a model for other counties. It gives the city stronger legal standing to force treatment for homeless people with serious mental illness and drug addiction who frequently cycle through emergency services.

Legislation in the 1960s gave Californians more rights to ensure they are not improperly locked away because of mental illness. But Newsom said that with decades of cuts to the social safety net that followed, people with mental health problems have instead been shuffled into jails and ended up homeless.

“All of this relies and hinges on an individual being capable of accepting help to get off the streets and into treatment in the first place,” he said. “Some, as we know, tragically are not.”

Lawmakers across the ideological spectrum said they supported his goal, including state Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, who carried a bill last year that authorized the San Francisco pilot program. Sen. John Moorlach, R-Costa Mesa (Orange County), said the balance between protecting people’s civil liberties and getting them the help they need had swung too far in one direction.

“We’ve got to start thinking about the civil rights of everybody else,” Moorlach said. “I have housewives that call me and they say, ‘I’m uncomfortable going to the grocery story because I’m getting accosted in the parking lot.’”

But any attempt to strengthen conservatorship laws is likely to encounter opposition from advocates worried that it could be used to hide people away rather than address their problems.

“What’s the difference between that and a county jail?” said Sen. Jim Beall, a San Jose Democrat who has worked extensively on mental health legislation. He said he would be looking to make sure any proposal is oriented toward therapy and family involvement.

Newsom also asked the Legislature to expand a new law exempting homeless shelters and supportive housing in Los Angeles from environmental review so that it would apply statewide. The law aims to speed up construction of the projects by temporarily waiving the requirements of the California Environmental Quality Act, which has often been used to challenge them in court. A similar measure streamlining approval for services-rich Navigation Centers statewide passed last year as well.

The governor said money from Proposition 63, the 2004 millionaires tax to fund mental health services, is not reaching the people who need it most. He said the state should refocus how it is spending the revenue and expand the kinds of services it pays for, especially addiction treatment.

“We need to stop tolerating open drug use on our streets,” he said.

Newsom said counties are holding $160 million more in reserves than legally required, and that they should spend the money to “help people get off the streets and into treatment” by June 30 or “we’ll make sure they get spent for you.”

Although he did not specifically call for raising taxes, a politically challenging prospect, Newsom pledged to work with the Legislature to find a new source of funding that could be dedicated to homelessness. Some lawmakers have floated plans, such as Assemblyman David Chiu, D-San Francisco, who wants to pay for more services by capping mortgage interest deductions.

But Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, D-Lakewood (Los Angeles County), greeted the idea skeptically. He noted that the Legislature placed a successful measure on the 2018 ballot that authorized $2 billion in bonds to build housing for homeless people with mental illnesses.

“If the problem rises to such a level, then it’s something that we definitely have to look at,” Rendon said. “But it’s important to point out that we’ve already established a source of revenue.”

Newsom has sharpened his focus on homelessness at the start of his second year in office, including with a $750 million budget plan to pay rent and build affordable housing for homeless people and a proposed multibillion-dollar expansion of Medi-Cal to keep chronically homeless people out of the emergency room and other costly care.

In January, he signed an executive order to open vacant state land to emergency shelters and deployed trailers to homeless encampments to provide temporary housing.

The heightened response follows months of scolding from President Trump over California’s widespread encampments. His administration singled out California when the annual federal homelessness count was released in December, showing that the state’s increase — up 16% to more than 151,000 people — was greater than that of every other state combined.

Newsom wrapped up his address by tying the crisis back to California’s housing shortage and his broader efforts to boost construction. Despite campaigning on a goal of building 3.5 million homes by 2025, which would require the state to quintuple the rate of production, construction actually declined slightly last year. The biggest housing bill in the Legislature, Wiener’s SB50, failed in the Senate last month under intense opposition from local governments.

Newsom alluded again to that measure — which would allow denser residential construction around public transit and in wealthy suburbs — and said he could not protect local control “at the cost of imperiling the California dream.”

Alexei Koseff is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: alexei.koseff@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @akoseff