On Monday, the mayor of Sacramento told an Assembly budget subcommittee that the state should be spending its mental health funds on the state’s homelessness crisis.

That might not sound like news, but it is. The view that homelessness is connected to mental health issues has not been generally accepted in the polite society of California government officials and the nonprofit executives who hang around with them.

More typical is this view from Michelle Doty Cabrera, executive director of the County Behavioral Health Directors Association: “Behavioral health issues are not what’s driving our homelessness crisis today. It is fundamentally a question of income inequality.”

The crisis is also blamed on a lack of housing construction, leading to policies like the one in Los Angeles that has raised taxes to pay for $1.2 billion of homeless housing that costs taxpayers more than $500,000 per unit.

The testimony of Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg is noteworthy for several reasons. He’s a former state Senate leader, and he was the co-author of Proposition 63, the 2004 ballot measure that enacted an additional 1% income tax on state residents who earn more than $1 million per year. Titled the Mental Health Services Act, the law raises about $2 billion per year in tax revenue to be spent on mental health services.

But Steinberg says “there has been insufficient attention paid to homelessness.” He asked state lawmakers to put new requirements on counties to report on how they’re spending the money to meet local mental health needs. “I want this act more focused on unsheltered homelessness,” he told the budget subcommittee.

This proposed shift in focus comes as President Donald Trump readies a still-unknown plan to address the homelessness crisis in California. Trump recently forced out the executive director of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, Matthew Doherty, who was immediately hired by Gov. Gavin Newsom. Now Newsom says he knows the president’s plan, but won’t divulge it to the public.

Another unknown is whether the U.S. Supreme Court will hear an appeal to Martin v. Boise, the Ninth Circuit’s 2018 ruling that cities may not enforce a ban on camping on the sidewalks and other public places unless they have enough shelter beds for everyone. If the justices overturn the Boise decision, local governments would once again have the authority to ban tent encampments without facing instant lawsuits from civil rights attorneys.

In the meantime local governments in California need funds to cover the costs of dealing with the homelessness crisis. State legislative leaders just sent a letter to the Trump administration demanding that the federal government certify the latest homeless count in California so funds can be distributed. The feds say they’ll certify the numbers in mid-December, as they did last year, so the letter may be more about appearing to take action and not actually doing anything.

Newsom also made an effort to appear to be doing something. He sent a letter to the Trump administration asking for an increase in fair market rent values in vouchers, currently $1,200 per month.

But when Newsom made a similar request in September, his request was turned down by the administration’s housing secretary, Ben Carson. “Your letter seeks more federal dollars for California from hardworking American taxpayers but fails to admit that your State and local policies have played a major role in creating the current crisis,” Carson wrote.

Carson also pointed out that California has not applied for available federal funding to create “new demonstration projects for acute care psychiatric hospitals or residential treatment settings.”

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California is indeed a cautionary tale for the nation Why wouldn’t California apply for federal funding that’s so desperately needed?

Perhaps because people in power prefer not to blame untreated mental illness or substance abuse for the explosion of tent encampments throughout the state. If they can blame it on income inequality, they can justify higher taxes to redistribute income. If they can blame it on housing availability, they can justify policies that force higher density on unwilling communities.

But if their premises are wrong, their policies won’t work.

The state takes in $2 billion per year in tax revenue that is earmarked for mental health services. A better use of those funds is a good place to start.

Susan Shelley is an editorial writer and columnist for the Southern California News Group. Susan@SusanShelley.com. Twitter: @Susan_Shelley