Los Angeles County leaders are moving forward with a project that will supply nearly 100 treatment beds for people living with serious mental illness, a much-needed step toward providing options for some of the region’s most vulnerable residents. The new beds — 96 of them — will help finish the county’s Restorative Care Village in Boyle Heights, a facility set up to serve the health needs of Los Angeles County’s unhoused population. County Supervisor Hilda Solis said in a news release that these types of treatment beds have been identified as the “most needed to help address our County’s behavioral health crisis.
” “Once completed, the Restorative Care Village will restore dignity to our communities and give our most vulnerable hope for a new beginning,” Solis said. County authorities say the new beds will mostly be for people living with serious mental illness — like schizophrenia or bipolar disorder — who no longer need to be hospitalized but are not ready to live independently. They will be housed within a locked facility where patients can get round-the-clock psychiatric care.
The cost is estimated at $143 million, with some of that funding coming from the federal American Rescue Plan Act, county authorities said. The project is expected to be completed in 2026. These so-called subacute beds are the “most urgent resource need” for the county to address the ongoing behavioral health crisis, according to a February report from a consulting agency .
