Opinion: Riverside County’s Mental Health Crisis Meets a Turning Point — Thanks to You

For decades, lack of accessible mental health care has loomed over California like a slow-moving storm. Accelerated by the pandemic, the cracks in our behavioral health system widened into chasms, deepening a crisis that has spilled onto our streets, into our jails, and overwhelmed our emergency departments.

The result? A heartbreaking cycle of suffering. People in acute mental distress are too often left without options—languishing in places that were never designed to provide proper care. Jails, sidewalks and ERs have become de facto psychiatric wards. It’s a system that fails everyone: patients, families, first responders and the broader community.

But now, for the first time in decades, change is on the horizon. Not just incremental policy shifts or layers of new bureaucracy, but tangible investment in our community. And it’s all thanks to you, the voters.

Earlier this month, Riverside University Health System (RUHS) was awarded more than $333 million in Proposition 1 dollars—a ballot initiative approved by voters in March 2024. This award included funding for two projects:

RUHS Behavioral Health Center – A transformative $184 million investment to fund a new behavioral health wellness center in Moreno Valley. At the heart of that project: a 100-bed inpatient psychiatric facility that will serve adults, adolescents and—for the first time in Riverside County—children ages 12 and under.

Harmony Haven Children and Youth Wellness Center – A $149.7 million endeavor that will fund the county’s first 30-bed Adolescent Residential Substance Use Disorder (SUD) facility, a 16-bed Psychiatric Residential Treatment Facility, a 15-station Mental Health Urgent Care center and a comprehensive outpatient clinic for behavioral health and substance use services.

To understand just how monumental this is, consider that, until now, Riverside County—home to more than 2.5 million people—had just 77 public acute care inpatient psychiatric beds. Only 12 were designated for teens. None for children.

Since 2019, RUHS has added more than 569 step-down beds (at one point, producing more than all other 57 California counties combined), but acute psychiatric beds remained painfully scarce. On any given day, an estimated 30 patients at RUHS Medical Center ETS/ITS alone—not even including other emergency departments in the county—require urgent psychiatric admission but have nowhere to go. For children, the situation is even bleaker; parents are forced to seek help outside the county, navigating an already traumatic experience with added logistical and emotional strain.

Now, that changes.

These new facilities represent a pivotal step forward, bringing compassion, capacity and infrastructure back into our mental health system. When paired with the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 Grants Pass decision—which equips cities with clearer tools to address unsheltered homelessness—and the passage of Proposition 36, which expands law enforcement’s ability to respond, we are well positioned to address the intertwined crises of homelessness and untreated mental illness.

The road ahead won’t be easy, and there is still much work to do. But thanks to your vote, Riverside County is no longer stuck in neutral. We’re building a system that meets people where they are and offers them a path to recovery, dignity and hope.

And it couldn’t come soon enough.