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In California, a funding shift in the state budget could gut mental health crisis teams that are fielding record call volumes across the state, according to CalMatters. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s budget blueprint proposes changing the mobile crisis service from a required benefit to an optional one, meaning the state does not have to cover the funding gap.

Counties that choose to keep the service will have to pay for it themselves at a price tag of $150 million to $200 million a year. Demand for mobile crisis teams across California is surging, while federal funding that supercharged their growth is set to end.

In 2023, California made mobile crisis response a statewide benefit when a federal law offered a financial incentive, with the federal government temporarily covering 85% of the costs, up from the usual 50%.

The state plans to fund the service only through March 2027 before shifting the burden to counties. People with mental health and substance use disorders made up one-fifth of all emergency department visits in California. Since January 2024, the Department of Health Care Services has approved more than 73,000 claims for in-person mobile crisis encounters through Medi-Cal alone.

California has a projected state budget shortfall of nearly $3 billion for the upcoming fiscal year, and $22 billion the following year, according to state officials. Crisis calls in San Joaquin County have increased 15% this year compared to last, according to Fay Vieira.

Los Angeles County has doubled its mobile crisis teams since the state mandate took effect just over two years ago, according to the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health.

On April 27, 2026, James Gonzalez and Katerina Cabello reviewed the details of a call from the Los Angeles County dispatch in Altadena and drove towards the location of a crisis call in the Los Angeles area, a 30-minute drive. Earlier, on an early spring evening in Glendale, California, a 37-year-old woman was withdrawn and weak from refusing food and water for several days.

Her mother called for help and told a crisis counselor that her daughter had been hearing voices and expressed needing to “kill” those voices.

The woman would not go to a doctor. James Gonzalez and Katerina Cabello pulled up to the Glendale call in an unmarked white minivan. They wore casual clothes including khakis, jeans, and sweatshirts, and sounded no sirens.

Gonzalez and Cabello are one of 75 mobile crisis response teams Los Angeles County runs around the clock. Gonzalez and Cabello are licensed and trained as first responders for behavioral health crises. They respond in person, with backpacks and clipboards, to calls from 988, the crisis lifeline, or the county’s mental health helpline.

They work for Sycamores, a nonprofit agency that contracts with Los Angeles County.