SANTA MONICA—On October 13, Santa Monica Mayor Lana Negrete challenged the zoning requirements for the soon-to-be mental-health facilities on Ocean Avenue. At the Santa Monica City Council Meeting, Mayor Negrete requested a detailed “Agenda Item 16B” in time for the October 14 City Council meeting.
This was to include details on the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health and the non-profit, St. Joseph Center, the new Behavioral Health Bridge Housing Development coming soon to 413 and 825 Ocean Avenue.
Reports indicate the new mental health facility is to include 49 beds for members of the homeless/unhoused community with moderate to severe mental illness. The new St. Joseph’s mental health facility will include clinicians and security staff present 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Santa Monica residents are to take precedence. The center is to be funded through grants and state resources.
Mayor Negrete and the Santa Monica City Council remain under scrutiny from those living in the area. Real estate mogul Tyler Bindi aired his views in a post on X.
“Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica is home to some of the most expensive land in the country. Multimillion-dollar homes, five-star hotels, ocean views.
And now, LA County has decided this was the best spot to build a 49-bed mental health housing facility for individuals with severe mental illness. From a land-use standpoint, it’s baffling.
Turning irreplaceable, oceanfront real estate into government-funded mental health housing. Only in California.”
As of April 2025, the California Health Care Foundation reports that one in seven adults in California lives with a mental condition. One in twenty-six people struggles with a serious mental illness that markedly affects their daily lives.
The National Alliance on Mental Illness reports that 5,566,000 adults in California have some sort of mental illness, and 1,243 adults live with a serious mental condition.
In 2023, the Kaiser Family Foundation reports that 31.7 percent of adults living in California reported symptoms of anxiety and/or depressive disorder, in contrast to 32.3 percent of adults nationwide.
