Governor Newsom's CARE Court initiative is finally picking up steam in Los Angeles County after a rocky beginning. According to reporting by CalMatters Housing, this program was designed to help people struggling with serious mental illness by allowing family members, first responders, and others to petition a court to intervene. When someone gets referred, the court can set up a voluntary care agreement to connect them with community-based mental health services. If that voluntary approach doesn't work, a judge can order the person into a treatment plan instead.
The program launched in LA County back in December 2023, but it started slow, bringing in far fewer cases than officials had initially anticipated. However, things have shifted recently. CalMatters reports that petition filings jumped significantly between November 2025 and March 2026, with March alone seeing 68 petitions filed. That represents about an 85 percent increase in activity during that period. County officials say they've been working more closely with hospitals and first responders to identify people who could benefit from the program, and they've also expanded the types of mental illness covered, adding bipolar I disorder with psychotic features to the criteria.
Not everyone sees this uptick as positive news. Civil liberties advocates and mental health critics question whether the rising number of petitions actually translates to real improvements for people. Eve Garrow, a policy analyst at the ACLU of Southern California, told CalMatters that the petition numbers don't tell you anything about whether the program is actually helping people get better. She points out that the outcomes have been minimal compared to the size of the population that needs care. Additionally, roughly half of the petitions filed end up getting dismissed anyway.
The cost question is raising eyebrows too. CalMatters reports that when the state analyzed the program's first year, they found the cost per person was around 713,000 dollars. Over the entire period since the program started through June 2026, LA County received 1,111 petitions, which is substantially less than the roughly 3,800 petitions annually that state officials had projected the county could handle. So far, only a small number of people have completed the full 12-month program.
What I'm seeing locally is that court-ordered mental health interventions remain controversial, especially in the Bay Area where we tend to be skeptical of government mandates in healthcare. The real estate community needs to understand this because homelessness and untreated mental illness directly impact neighborhood conditions, property values, and quality of life in our communities. Whether CARE Court ends up being part of the solution or just another expensive program will affect the livability of the neighborhoods our clients care about most.
