The Metropolitan State Hospital opened in Norwalk in 1916, a self-contained facility complete with its own farm that treated people with mental illness.
Over the decades, the facility drastically shrank, reflecting a larger deinstitutionalization sweeping the state and country amid concerns over abuse at state psychiatric hospitals.
Now, the hospital, which treats mostly people involved with the justice system, is expanding to alleviate the county’s overlapping mental health and homelessness crisis, in what proponents described as a more compassionate approach than in the past.
On Friday, state and local officials held a groundbreaking ceremony for the Los Angeles County Care Community, which will open over the next few years in six now-vacant buildings at the state hospital.
In all, there will be more than 150 beds available for people with mental health challenges, including 32 for young adults facing a severe crisis.
The new campus will be run by the county, but major funding for the effort comes from Proposition 1, a Gov. Gavin Newsom-backed measure voters approved in 2024 that increased state funding for housing units where people are treated for substance abuse and mental health challenges.
“We have residents — many of them young people — who are struggling with serious mental illness and have no where to go,” L.A. County Supervisor Janice Hahn said in a statement. “By locking arms with the state, LA County is transforming these vacant buildings into a mental healthcare village where people can get the safe, professional, and compassionate treatment and housing they desperately need.”
The new village represents at least a small shift toward addressing the state’s homelessness and mental health crises with more mandatory programs.
In 2023, after a push by Newsom, the state launched a program known as CARE Court that enables judges to mandate mental health treatment plans if people don’t voluntarily agree.
Some cities have also moved to enable police to fine or arrest people sleeping on the streets.
At the new Los Angeles County Care Community, the 32 “subacute” beds for 18- to 25-year-olds are locked, meaning people can’t leave voluntarily. They will enter the facility after being put under conservatorship.
Civil rights organizations have criticized Proposition 1 for funding locked treatment facilities. But officials said the new Norwalk campus isn’t a return to the inhumane conditions of decades past.
Kyla Coates, a senior deputy director with the county’s Department of Mental Health, said today people have far more opportunity to challenge their commitment. Before entering conservatorship, people are provided a public defender and every six months have an opportunity to contest their status and exit.
In addition to the secure beds, there will be another 70 beds of interim housing and 60 units of permanent supportive housing on site, where residents can access different levels of mental health care and come and go as they please.
Twenty interim beds will be prioritized for people experiencing homelessness in Norwalk.
Each housing site will connect to an outside courtyard with a garden and big communal rooms with group activities, Coates said.
By locating varying levels of services in one sight, officials hope participants will have a better chance of success.
For example, once a person dealing with a severe mental health crisis receives the immediate care they need, they won’t have to leave and find long-term care elsewhere, but rather move into interim or permanent supportive housing on site.
“We need a lot more of this, but this will show people that it can be done,” said Hahn, who pushed for the project.
The emptying of state psychiatric hospitals starting in the 1960s has been blamed for rising levels of homelessness over the decades, though how much of a role it played is disputed.
Some hospitals closed all together amid reforms that made it harder to hold people against their will, while Metropolitan State Hospital in Norwalk remained opened — though at reduced capacity.
Today, there are roughly 850 patients at the Norwalk site, down from a height of 5,000 in the 1950s, said Diana Barnes, who runs the state hospital’s museum.
Exhibits at the museum highlight old practices no longer allowed, including forced sterilization and lobotomies.
But not all patients were committed involuntarily. One write-up details how Bela Lugosi, the famed Hungarian actor known for his portrayal of Count Dracula, admitted himself in 1955 for treatment of an opioid addiction that he developed while trying to manage the pain from an injury sustained in World War I.
Most patients today have been deemed too incompetent to stand trial, Barnes said. Others have been declared not guilty by reason of insanity, while others are in conservatorship.
The six vacant buildings, which the county is leasing to establish the Los Angeles County Care Community, have been vacant since the early 2000s.
The 70 interim housing beds are expected to open at the end of 2027, with the subacute beds to be finished in early 2028. A completion date for the permanent supportive housing has yet to be determined.
“Today marks an important milestone in addressing California’s growing mental health crisis,” said state Sen. Bob Archuleta (D-Pico Rivera), who was instrumental in getting the state to lease the buildings, at Friday’s groundbreaking. “Instead of sitting empty, these buildings will now have a place of care, recovery and stability.”
