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Note: The Outpost has changed the names of the CARE Court participants in this story to protect their identities.

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Eight months ago, 41-year-old John Anderson was living in a makeshift shelter in the forest, struggling to cope with untreated schizoaffective disorder. Now, he has his own apartment in Eureka and the mental health support needed to rebuild his life.

“It’s teeny-tiny, but it’s so nice to have a place of my own,” he proudly told Humboldt County Superior Court Judge Kelly Neel at a recent hearing. “And it’s all thanks to CARE Court.”

Anderson is a passionate advocate for CARE Court, a voluntary court-based treatment program for adults with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and other psychotic disorders. Enacted through the state’s Community Assistance, Recovery, and Empowerment (CARE) Act, the program is specifically designed for people who have lost their housing or become incarcerated due to untreated mental illness and either aren’t willing or lack the decision-making capacity to seek treatment on their own. 

In CARE Court, county attorneys and behavioral health staff work with each participant to create a CARE agreement, a voluntary treatment plan that includes behavioral health care, medications, a housing plan and other supportive services. In rare cases, the court can order a CARE plan, an involuntary agreement that can lead to court-ordered conservatorship. Each case is initiated by a petition, which can be filed by family members, first responders, mental health clinicians or the individual seeking assistance. The court’s role is to oversee the case, monitor progress and provide accountability.

“A lot of people don’t know that they have the ability to do better until they’re forced into a situation where they actually see themselves begin to make accomplishments.”
— A CARE Court participant

When Gov. Gavin Newsom first announced the new policy in 2022, he described CARE Court as a “paradigm shift” in state’s homeless strategy that would bring people with serious mental illness off the streets and into supportive housing. However, the program has failed to live up to expectations in most California counties, with less than 4,000 total petitions submitted since the first phase of the program launched in October 2023, according to data from the state Judicial Branch.

Interestingly, Humboldt County has one of the highest referral rates per capita, with 55 petitions filed and one graduation recorded since the second phase of the program rolled out in December 2024. It’s not clear how many of those petitions were for unhoused people. There are 33 local cases still moving through the system.

“It’s just an amazing program,” Humboldt County Superior Court Judge Timothy Canning said in a recent interview. “We’ve certainly had some folks come through the program [who] didn’t do so well, but we’ve had a number of other people who have done extraordinarily well and really gotten their lives back on track. … I think a lot of its success is owed to the behavioral health department here in Humboldt. The way they’ve implemented the program [has resulted in] just amazing outcomes.”

Given his success with the program thus far, Anderson has become a sort of poster child for Humboldt’s CARE Court. After he graduates, he wants to sign on as a peer coach to help support other people going through the program.

“I’m really great at working with others [and] building them up,” he told the Outpost in a recent interview. “Now that those doors have been open to me and I know how to apply, I want to help other people who are going through similar struggles.”

Anderson started CARE Court in September 2025, just a few months after he was arrested on felony charges for threatening an elderly couple walking through the forest. He was living in the woods at the time, the result of losing both his job and his apartment. As Anderson recalls, he was deep in psychosis and “screaming at the world” when he was overheard by the couple, who took his shouting as a threat and called the police. He described his arrest as “a blessing in disguise.”

“I didn’t want to deal with life for a year. I was just trying to remove myself from everybody and everything … but there ended up being more people around than I was used to, and they thought I was yelling at them,” he explained. “The court deemed me incompetent [to stand trial because] I wasn’t in the mental state to speak straight or aware of everything that was happening. I was placed in a state psychological ward for people with disabilities … where I was properly medicated and brought out of psychosis.”

Once Anderson was medicated and stabilized, a psychiatrist went over the details of his diagnosis — schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type — when it finally clicked. He had been medicated for short, sporadic intervals before his arrest, but had stopped taking medication “because the side effects became worse than the disability.” It wasn’t until his stint at the state hospital that he actually understood his diagnosis.

“With somebody like me, the disability isn’t constant,” Anderson explained. “Half the time I’m normal — I don’t appear to have a disability at all, mentally or emotionally — but when the emotional dystrophies start to affect the psyche … the chemicals of the brain chemistry [become] unstable… and then the brain functions erratically and incorrectly. I wasn’t aware of any of these details about my diagnosis until after I got into the system, and they put me into this state mental health hospital.”

“A lot of people don’t know that they have the ability to do better until they’re forced into a situation where they actually see themselves begin to make accomplishments,” he added. “This approach is only effective if the individual has the motivation for their future and their self-stability.”

The state hospital submitted Anderson’s CARE Court petition on July 14, and his agreement was finalized two months later. In his case, the program is being used as mental health diversion under Penal Code 1001.36 to resolve his criminal charges. He’s set to graduate from CARE Court in September 2026.

‘CARE Court Has Been a Godsend’

I was invited to observe a few CARE Court hearings last month to learn more about the dynamic between participants and the county staff who lead the program. (CARE Court participants and their family members agreed to be involved in this story on the condition of anonymity.) That’s where I met Anderson and Jason Johnson, a 40-year-old man from Southern Humboldt who’s just two months into the program.

Johnson’s parents filed a petition in October, and the court entered his CARE agreement in December. Judge Neel and the county attorneys representing Johnson didn’t get into the details of his case, but said he’s using CARE Court as an avenue to resolve criminal charges. His diversion plan is slated for approval next month.

“We’re here today to check in and encourage him to stick to his treatment plan,” Deputy County Counsel Heather Durand told the court during Johnson’s progress review hearing. 

At one point in proceedings, Humboldt County Public Defender Luke Brownfield leaned over to his client and asked if he needed help with anything. Johnson quietly explained that he recently lost his job and had been pretty lonely living by himself. “I’m OK,” he shrugged.

His father, who was the only person other than me seated in the gallery, stood up and explained to the court that he and his wife were hoping to move their son to Eureka, but said they were having a hard time finding a renter or buyer for their house in Southern Humboldt. He noted that his son had been ostracized from his small community after his “break with reality” and hoped he could make a fresh start in Eureka, where he’d be closer to mental health resources. 

“We can use all the help we can get,” he said.

Without missing a beat, Durand said the county could help him find housing. Looking up at Judge Neel, she asked if the court would add housing to Johnson’s priority list and provide an update at his hearing next month. 

CARE Court Clinician Jordan Lampi asked if it would be possible to relocate Johnson down to Sonoma County, where his parents live, if he’s approved for diversion. Judge Neel said that could probably be arranged, but his father seemed hesitant. 

“He’s just doing so well here,” he said. 

Speaking to me directly, his father explained how difficult it can be for parents to advocate for their adult children when they’re experiencing a mental health crisis and navigating the judicial system. “We couldn’t even talk to his lawyer,” he said. “CARE Court is a godsend.”

He urged me to call him if the state ever threatened to dismantle the program.

The final hearing of the day was for 55-year-old Mark Thomas, whose CARE agreement was being submitted to the court for consideration. After a criminal arrest late last year, Thomas was committed to a state hospital after being deemed incompetent to stand trial. The state hospital had submitted the petition on his behalf. At the time of his hearing last month, he had not been approved for diversion and was still in custody.

Thomas’ wife and elderly mother sat in the gallery as Brownfield went over the next steps for his treatment plan. “We just want what’s best for him,” his mother said, adding that she and his wife want to stay informed of his treatment plan but don’t want to serve as his primary support. “We want a trained person [in that role] because we don’t think he’ll listen to us.”

The court agreed and also assigned Thomas a medical case manager to oversee his medications. His next hearing was scheduled for two weeks later.

‘We’re Going to Use This to Help People’

Sitting in a conference room on the second floor of the courthouse, I asked the CARE Court team — Brownfield, Durand, Lampi and Meghan Sheeran, a behavioral health clinician with the county’s Comprehensive Community Treatment (CCT) program — to try to explain why Humboldt’s program has been such a success and how it differs from other California counties.

“I gotta admit … I didn’t even want to do CARE Court,” Durand said. “I had a really negative attitude about the legislation because I didn’t think it was going to work. … I remember in, like, October 2024, telling Luke [Brownfield], ‘This is dumb, this is never going to work.’ And he looked at me, and he said, ‘We’re going to use this to help people, right?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I’m going to try.’ We just didn’t know what to expect.”

In the weeks leading up to CARE Court’s statewide launch in December 2024, counties that hadn’t implemented the program braced for thousands of petitions to flood their systems. The local team had already been hard at work identifying people in need, many of whom had been in and out of jail or living on the streets for years.

“I think all the counties were preparing, but we already had a list of names assembled prior to implementation,” Durand said. “When December hit, we started filing petitions right away. And, from what I understand, other counties were waiting for the floodgates to open … but that didn’t happen. We had heard in the press and from the governor’s office that there were going to be thousands of cases statewide, but that just didn’t happen. … I guess we had a different mindset for whatever reason, and we just hit the ground running.”

Durand and Brownfield attributed their success, at least in part, to their ability to work well together, despite the fact that they’re generally on opposing sides of the courtroom. 

“We both want people to get help,” Durand said. “And I want to point out that we’re not giving people a pass. We’re talking about people who … are just going to reoffend because they have not been set up to succeed. … We’re trying to stop that. It’s going to save the taxpayers a ton of money and it’s going to protect the public because these people actually get treatment instead of just being thrown out on the street.”

As a behavioral health clinician, Sheeran says CARE Court has given service providers reach a segment of the population that was previously inaccessible. 

To illustrate her point, Durand drew three squares on a sheet of paper — “assisted outpatient treatment (AOT)” on the left, “CARE” in the center and “LPS conservatorship” on the right. She explained that CARE Court provides another option for people who need more support than an AOT program can offer, but don’t qualify for conservatorship because they aren’t considered gravely disabled, meaning they can still meet their basic needs for food, clothing and shelter.

(Note: The definition of “gravely disabled” was recently expanded to include “personal safety and medical care” as basic needs. “Gravely disabled” is also defined as “a result of a mental health disorder, impairment by chronic alcoholism, severe substance use disorder, or a co-occurring mental health disorder and severe substance use disorder.”)

“For shelter, if you got a tent and a sleeping bag and you’re camped out somewhere — that’s consider a shelter under the law,” Durand said. “What we’re talking about [in terms of grave disability] is someone who’s lying on the sidewalk without anything, and it’s 34 degrees and raining outside. … Those are the people who end up on LPS conservatorship.”

AOT, on the other hand, applies to people who are “capable enough to schedule appointments and take medication with assistance,” Durand continued. “There is help with managing medication, but they’re able to manage on an outpatient basis. In my opinion, CARE targets this in-between population: the people who aren’t sick enough to end up [in a conservatorship] but who aren’t well enough to take care of themselves.”

The problem is, CARE agreements are almost always voluntary, unless they’re tied to a court-ordered diversion agreement or a person is determined to be gravely disabled. A petition can be filed on someone’s behalf, but that doesn’t mean they have to stick with the program. 

“Many of these people have had behavioral health staff try to help before, but it’s the same thing over and over again,” Sheeran said. “I can’t say ‘You must do this [program].’ I can say, ‘If you don’t, your long-term outcome is not good. Please, let us help you.’ An not every individual we’re working with is getting that picture … but we just have to keep coming back, right?”

“Every year we lose people on the streets, and anything we can do to prevent that, I would love to do,” she added. “They all deserve a whole group of people out there trying to turn things around and give them their best life.”

Durand acknowledged the public sentiment that the county isn’t doing enough to help people living on the streets. The 2024 Point-In-Time County identified 1,573 unhoused people county. Some of those folks qualify for CARE Court, but many others don’t. 

“I think [there’s] a community perception of ‘Why do you have all these people out here walking around on the street and sleeping in the alcoves? They’re clearly mentally ill — why aren’t you helping them?’ They have a right to live their life the way they want to,” she said, emphasizing again that the county can’t force people into treatment unless they are gravely disabled. “I really do think [CARE] is a really valuable tool.”

It’s still a relatively new program, and the CARE Court team hopes it will become more successful as time goes on and more funding becomes available to support staff. In the meantime, they’ll continue to help who they can, like Anderson.

“Before CARE Court, I didn’t have the opportunities I have now, and they opened up all the doors to the different outlets in the community that I needed for aid,” he said. “We need to focus more on the success rates and realize how big a deal it is, even though the statistics are small.”