Los Angeles County is finally doing something with those long-empty hulks at Metropolitan State Hospital in Norwalk. On Friday, county leaders broke ground on a new mental health campus that will turn six long-vacant buildings into treatment space and housing for people with serious mental illness. The project, called the Los Angeles County Care Community, has been championed by Supervisor Janice Hahn, who has pushed for years to put the mothballed hospital wings back to work.
What The Campus Will Include
The plan is to stack multiple levels of care on one campus so people can move from crisis to stability without getting uprooted and shipped across the county. According to the Governor’s Office, the Care Community will include two subacute psychiatric facilities with a total of 32 locked beds for young adults ages 18 to 25, a 70-bed interim housing building with on-site wraparound services, and two permanent supportive housing buildings with 60 apartments, for a combined 162 beds.
A shared community building is slated to house dining areas, case management offices, and wellness spaces. County officials say those shared amenities are central to a recovery-focused model instead of just warehousing people until their time is up.
Funding, Timeline And Local Work
The price tag is being covered in large part by Proposition 1. Roughly $65 million from that statewide bond will back the Norwalk project, and county officials say the interim housing is expected to open by late 2027, with the locked subacute units following in early 2028, as reported by the Los Angeles Times…