Posts Tagged: Roger Niello

What Will it Take to Get the Mentally Ill Homeless Off the Streets?

A homeless person sleeping on the street. Photo from Shutterstock user easyshutter.

by CAPITOL WEEKLY STAFF posted 03.27.2023

CAPITOL WEEKLY PODCAST: Last week, Gov. Gavin Newsom released a proposal for a $3 billion bond measure aimed at the 2024 ballot, to fund housing for people with severe mental illness. At the same time, Newsom asked the legislature to revise 2004’s Proposition 63. Author and journalist Dan Morain joined us to talk about the two proposals, the half century of policy and politics that got us to where we are today, and shared his own personal story of a family member unable to live on his own after a devastating accident.

The growing push for major action on mental health and homelessness

Via Shutterstock

by BY SIGRID BATHEN posted 02.22.2023

A growing chorus of critics say well-intentioned but archaic laws – designed to protect individual rights, with stiff restrictions on what constitutes “grave disability” – prevent desperate families from getting severely mentally ill relatives into treatment, leaving them to suffer and die on the street.

The fall and rise of Roger Niello

Roger Niello in his office. Photo by Scott Duncan, Capitol Weekly

by BY RICH EHISEN posted 01.30.2023

When Roger Niello left the California Assembly in 2010, he figured his time in elected office had run its course. After all, the year before he had committed the most unforgivable of sins for a Republican of the day: He was among six of his fellow GOP colleagues who voted for a budget that included tax hikes, drawing the wrath of his party’s most vocal anti-tax contingent.