Prop 36 would cut key funding for drug treatment programs

Damien Alatorre says he first got high when he was 9 years old, the start of a path that has led him in and out of juvenile detention and jail since he was 17. Getting caught with drugs and alcohol and getting into fights as a teenager in Madera escalated into more serious charges in recent years, including burglary. Each time, he says, he was high.

In August, he was booked in jail in connection with a commercial burglary, according to county records. He told his lawyer that instead of going to trial, he wanted to try drug court, a program in San Francisco that lets people accused of crimes go to treatment instead of jail.

“I told him that I’m still young,” Alatorre said. “I made mistakes. I just need to get out of the situation that I’m in.”

He was released from jail last month and about a week later celebrated his 26th birthday — his first as a free man in seven years.

Alatorre is now in a Salvation Army-run drug treatment program called Harbor Light in San Francisco’s Soma neighborhood. 

A ballot measure before California voters this election aims to expand the use of drug diversion programs like the one Alatorre is in by increasing punishments for theft and drug crimes and providing a new type of charge prosecutors can use to steer people into treatment. But the measure would also cut into one of the main funding sources for Harbor Light and other programs like it, meaning it could shrink the treatment options available — even as it steers more people into them.

Prop 36 would roll back parts of a measure voters approved in 2014 to downgrade drug possession and thefts worth less than $950 to misdemeanors. That law, Prop 47, intended to divert money from locking up low-level offenders into rehabilitation programs, but critics say it went too far and convinced thieves they wouldn’t face consequences for stealing. 

Prop 36 would eliminate the $950 threshold for a third theft, meaning someone caught stealing three times could be charged with a felony, regardless of the value of the merchandise stolen. It would do the same for a third drug possession charge. That could add years of jail time for people convicted of those crimes. It would also create a new type of charge called a “treatment-mandated felony” that would sentence people to treatment rather than jail. 

But the measure does not contain any new funding for treatment. By increasing prison and jail sentences, the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office, which assesses the costs of ballot measures, predicts it would steer tens of millions of dollars away from programs like Harbor Light.

Right now, Harbor Light has about 20 treatment beds funded through money generated by Prop 47 — the very funding source fiscal analysts say will be cut if Prop 36 passes. The program also receives funding through the San Francisco Department of Public Health’s general fund, said Adrian Maldonado, who runs the program. The rest — about 40% — is funded through the Salvation Army.

“What’s going to happen when more people are mandated from the court to go to treatment, but the court has no money to fund it?” Maldonado asked. “Is the implication that the Salvation Army will just take larger and larger numbers of people at our own expense?

San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan has become one of the most vocal supporters of Prop 36, and has focused on its promise to increase treatment. 

Mahan is among a group of moderate Democrats, including San Francisco Mayor London Breed, who have endorsed the measure, joining Republicans who have tried for years to overturn Prop 47.

Mahan says the state needs to force more people into residential drug and mental health treatment.

“In decriminalizing, I think we had a very noble and somewhat valid vision that we could treat addiction solely as a health issue — shift funds from the criminal justice system to the health system,” Mahan said. But he argues fentanyl has dramatically worsened addiction problems and Prop 47 didn’t actually divert enough money from punishment into treatment to be effective. “The idea that we don’t need an intervention that holds people accountable for treatment is wrong.”

There’s evidence he may be right — a study in 2020 found that since Prop 47 passed, participation in drug courts declined.

But Mahan also acknowledges drug treatment programs don’t currently have enough funding to support all the people going through drug court and other programs that aim to divert people accused of crimes into treatment.

He said he doesn’t have a statewide plan for how to fund the massive treatment expansion he and other Prop 36 proponents advocate for, though he said implementing Proposition 1 is the right place to start.

That measure, which voters passed in March, includes $6.4 billion in new funding to build residential mental health treatment facilities and aims to divert more existing mental health services funding into intensive programs for the most severely mentally ill and away from programs aimed at lower-level treatment.

That could mean more funds for residential programs like Harbor Light. But the process of allocating the money will vary by county, and most of the reallotment won’t happen until 2026. That means if voters pass Prop 36, there won’t necessarily be new funds available by mid-December when it would take effect.

Gov. Gavin Newsom says supporters like Mahan are wrong to suggest funding from Prop 1, which he championed, could support the expanded treatment called for in Prop 36, which he opposes. Newsom often points to a statistic from 2022 when most counties reported needing more residential treatment and when 22 of the state’s 58 counties said they did not have any residential drug treatment at all.

Even in San Francisco, where there’s a relatively robust drug court system, there’s still a shortage of treatment options.

Superior Court Judge Michael Begert said some people succeed in the program, completing their court-ordered treatment and turning their lives around. But there aren’t enough treatment slots available to everyone who would benefit. 

“My issue is I don’t have the resources I’d like to have,” Begert said. 

There are major shortages, for example, of treatment options for Spanish speakers and social workers who can talk to people in jail who might be candidates for drug treatment. 

“Sometimes it takes three or four weeks just to find someone to talk to a person in jail to find out what they need,” Begert said, noting that it can then take even longer for a treatment slot to open. “The whole process just leaves people in jail for a long time, which costs a lot of money and isn’t good for their recovery.”

That’s what happened to Robert Demar Bell, a 32-year-old drug court participant at Harbor Light. After he landed in jail for fighting with security guards while high on meth, Bell, who has been smoking meth since he was 22, said his lawyer encouraged him to participate in drug court. He decided he wanted to participate in April, but didn’t get into a program until August. The wait was demoralizing, he said.

“I was kind of giving up on life,” he said.

Bell failed to stay sober in the first program he was in, but has renewed hope he can succeed at the Salvation Army’s program, where he’s supposed to stay for six months.

Before, he said he spent years cycling between prison and living on the street. He said he wants to stay sober in part for his 10-year-old son.

“I don’t want to die a dope fiend,” he said.

Drug court’s success in San Francisco is constrained by limitations on the programs available, Begert said. Options available in the city, like Harbor Light, are in neighborhoods where participants have easy access to the highly addictive drugs they’re trying to avoid.

“If we had lots of available, high-quality beds, we would be doing better,” Begert said. “I don’t know why, in a city as focused on these issues as this one claims to be, why we continually have these challenges.”

So far this year, 88 people have graduated from Harbor Light’s six-month program, meaning they stayed sober for six months. Nineteen more people have completed court-mandated 90-day treatment programs. That represents about half of the 211 people who have entered Harbor Light this year, Maldonado said. The facility isn’t locked, but participants must agree to restrictions on when they can leave. 

“You can walk five minutes in any direction here and you can cop any kind of dope you want easily,” Maldonado said. 

Maldonado said that while he thinks court-mandated treatment can be effective, he doesn’t think the state needs a new law like Prop 36 to do it. He said DAs and judges already have enough power to threaten jail sentences for misdemeanor crimes and don’t need to escalate those crimes into felonies.

He said the wait times for drug court and to get into drug treatment in the city are unacceptable. When someone decides they want to get treatment for their addiction, not being able to quickly get into treatment means they need to battle their urge to use and debilitating withdrawal symptoms on their own while they wait.

“It shouldn’t take weeks,”he said. “We don’t think it’s appropriate or reasonable to ask a drug addict to wait even a couple of days.”

Spencer Hughes was charged with robbery and shoplifting in 2022. Hughes, who said he started using meth after he went through a divorce, said he was trying to take a bottle of wine, a ham sandwich and a bottle of Pepsi and that his charges were upgraded because he had a knife with him. He said he made a plea agreement that included the condition that he do six months of drug rehab so that his case could be dismissed. He is set to graduate from Harbor Light’s six-month program next month. Once he graduates, he said he’s in line to get into a subsidized apartment.

He said he’s planning to stay sober in his new living arrangement with help from his therapist.

He said he doesn’t support the part of Prop 36 that would increase punishments. The real issue is that there needs to be more mental health treatment available for people so they don’t end up in jail in the first place, Hughes said.

“Getting people into treatment facilities and programs and housing is a good thing,” he said. “But the way they’re going about it, (giving) them a felony first. I don’t agree with that part.”

Alatorre is just a few weeks into his 90-day court-mandated treatment program. But he says he plans to stay at Harbor Light longer so he can graduate from the six-month program and be in line for free housing. He wants to stay in San Francisco where there are more resources he can use to stay sober. 

But that, he says, will be a challenge. He knows people frequently fail out of drug treatment programs multiple times. 

“I know I can complete this program,” he said. “I just don’t know if I can stay sober … The only time I’ve really been sober is in jail.” 

He said he doesn’t like the idea of accepting a handout, and that he wants to earn the housing he hopes to secure by staying away from drugs.

“I’m going to earn this,” he said.

Reach Sophia Bollag: [email protected]; X: @SophiaBollag