Health Update: San Diego County lands $99.5M state mental health grant, Palomar gets $50M – San Diego Union-Tribune – What Experts Say

San Diego County did well in California’s second-round allocation of Proposition 1 funds earmarked for mental health care and substance use treatment infrastructure, with three proposals receiving a total of $171 million, the largest, single allocation made in the grant awards announced Wednesday.

The county’s proposed “behavioral health wellness campus” in San Diego’s Midway District received a $99.5 million allocation, topping $76.8 million for a behavioral health campus proposal in Los Angeles.

Palomar Health in North County also received very positive news Wednesday with the state restoring a $50 million grant to build a 120-bed behavioral health campus on its Escondido campus. The state rescinded a grant of the same size in 2025 after Palomar’s charitable foundation reportedly failed to meet a 10% requirement for matching funds.

The Pala Band of Mission Indians is the third recipient of a second-round grant for $21.5 million to build a substance use and mental health treatment center near Chokla, also known as Gregory Mountain, which the tribe purchased in 2016, and the federal government placed in trust in 2023, preventing a landfill at the site, which is adjacent to the Pala reservation.

The grant will help pay for the construction of a facility that will offer mental health care crisis stabilization, partial hospitalization, and residential adult and adolescent substance use treatment.

Robert H. Smith, chairman of the Pala band, said Wednesday that the site is isolated, providing the right kind of environment for healing.

“We’re going to develop this right under the oak trees against the mountain,” Smith said. “We will be able to offer wrap-around services that are really needed by families that are dealing with substance abuse and mental health needs.”

Efforts will be made, he added, to incorporate traditional healing methods from Native American culture, such as cleansing sweats, artwork and bird singing.

The center, which does not yet have a projected opening date, will be open to all members of local Native American communities and run under contract by Indian Health Council, a nonprofit medical provider headquartered on the Rincon reservation that operates medical clinics for nine area tribes.

The awards are part of the $6.4 billion in bonds that voters authorized in March 2024, when they narrowly passed Proposition 1, a ballot initiative that reallocated funds raised annually by a statewide 1% tax on personal income greater than $1 million authorized by the Mental Health Services Act of 2004.

About $4.4 billion of the total is allocated for building, renovating, or expanding mental health and substance use treatment capacity with the goal of creating about 6,800 new beds and outpatient treatment slots across California. The remaining $2 billion is to be spent creating supportive housing for Californians with severe mental illness and substance use disorders, including funds set aside for veterans.

The state made a first allocation of $3.3 billion in Proposition 1 funds in 2025, providing $185 million of that total to seven projects in San Diego County. All told, accounting for the fact that Palomar’s $50 million grant was rescinded and then reawarded, the total Proposition 1 spend in the region is a little more than $300 million.

Nadia Privara Brahms, director of behavioral health for the county, said Wednesday that receiving very nearly the full $100 million requested for the Midway wellness complex capped what was already an unprecedented investment in infrastructure needed by thousands of residents.

“It’s going to fundamentally change the way that people access care,” Privara Brahms said. “It’s hard to access care if you have to drive a half-hour or 45 minutes or an hour, and I think these investments will make it much easier for people to get the services that they need.”

The center planned for Rosecrans Street has a total estimated cost of $210 million, with about $27 million of that price tag accounting for the value of the county land it will be built upon.

Plans call for a multi-use complex with a crisis-stabilization unit, a mental health and rehabilitation center, a social rehabilitation facility, an adult residential substance use disorder treatment facility and an outpatient community health clinic.

“I think that it’s what we would consider our flagship in terms of an integrated campus that can get people connected to what they need in a short amount of time,” Privara Brahms said.

It is expected to take about four years to build the complex, which would sit next to the San Diego County Psychiatric Hospital. No estimated completion date has yet been set, the director said, because demolition must be completed on the old county health complex buildings still on the site.