Gavin won’t let the state fund sober living.

Fentanyl has created one of the greatest public health crises to rock San Francisco — and yet, for all the talk about compassion and treatment, we still don’t have the infrastructure to help people truly recover. Across San Francisco and the state, our “Housing First” system does little more than warehouse people in chaos. What’s missing isn’t money; it’s direction. The state has built thousands of “supportive housing” units but virtually none that require or even encourage sobriety. The result is a system that stabilizes no one and serves no one well.

To put it bluntly: California is in the middle of a public health emergency. 

That’s why Assemblymember Matt Haney’s AB 255 was so important — and why Governor Gavin Newsom’s decision to veto it is such a failure of leadership.

The bill would have created a simple, long-overdue pathway for cities and counties to fund sober living environments — homes where people could choose to live in stable, recovery-focused communities, free from the presence and pressure of drug use. Instead, California is right back where it started: stuck in a gray area where state law supposedly allows recovery housing, yet no one — not cities, counties, or providers — can actually do it without risking a lawsuit.

AB 255 started as a bold proposal. Haney’s original bill would have allowed up to 25 percent of state homelessness funds to be used for sober housing — homes where people commit to sobriety and peer support. It was a practical step toward offering choice in a system that currently provides only one option: “Housing First” units where drug use is permitted and oftentimes, in San Francisco, rampant.

But as the bill moved through Sacramento, it got diluted. Groups who opposed the bill like the Corporation for Supportive Housing and other housing first advocacy groups lobbied to shrink that cap from 25 percent down to just 10 percent. Haney accepted the compromise to keep the bill alive — an act of pragmatism, not ideology — because something was better than nothing.

Even then, he built in safeguards, including that tenants who relapsed had to be placed in another housing program. AB255 was designed to coexist with the Housing First model, not replace it. The State’s own fiscal analysis pegged first-year costs at about $4 million — tantamount to a rounding error in the Department of Housing and Community Development’s budget — to regulate and certify these programs. For that modest investment, California could have finally recognized that sober housing is a legitimate, evidence-based form of supportive housing.

And then the Governor killed it anyway.

Newsom’s veto message claimed the bill was “unnecessary” because state law already allows for sober housing. But if that’s true, where is it? Why are cities like San Francisco still being told they can’t open drug-free supportive housing with state dollars? Why do recovery providers, local governments, and attorneys all say the opposite? The Governor’s own July 2025 policy memo on “recovery housing” makes clear that such housing is only permitted if residents are sober by choice — a semantic escape hatch that gives bureaucrats an excuse to do nothing.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: Gavin Newsom doesn’t want to pick a fight with the establishment. He’s hiding behind legal wordplay instead of confronting a system that has failed. This veto protects the status quo — a sprawling network of “supportive housing” where relapse is expected and drug use is tolerated.

Let’s be clear about what that system looks like. California’s entire homelessness apparatus operates under the Housing First model — built on the notion that housing should come before sobriety or treatment. It was compassionate in theory: remove barriers, house people fast. But in practice, it’s created thousands of units where people continue to use drugs openly, where overdoses happen inside the very buildings meant to save lives, and where those ready to recover have nowhere to go. San Francisco alone has almost ~15,000 permanent supportive housing units and virtually zero sober ones.

Locally, Supervisor Matt Dorsey, who’s in long-term recovery himself, responded to the veto by introducing legislation to block city funds from going toward new drug-tolerant housing. Dorsey has also floated idea of a resolution that would ask either our City Attorney or District Attorney to ask the state’s Attorney General for his formal opinion on how state dollars can be used for sober housing.

His reaction said what the Governor’s veto refused to acknowledge: “We’ve got a lot of catching up to do for drug-free and recovery housing options, because we really don’t have any right now.” 

For people ready to turn their lives around, the Governor just slammed the door in their face.