She Survived a Brutal Attack. Will L.A. Finally Enforce Mental Health Law?

A New Law, Unfulfilled Promises

On a June morning in 2018, Cathy’s life was forever changed. A man under the influence of meth and armed with a knife climbed the balcony of her Santa Monica apartment and raped her at knifepoint. Now 73, she still lives with the aftermath—flashbacks, anxiety, and a shrinking world defined by fear. She believes California’s new mental health law could have prevented what happened to her. Her attacker had long struggled with mental illness and drug addiction, a combination that the courts later said exacerbated his violence.

During the trial, it was revealed that the rapist had been in and out of Los Angeles County's mental health system for nearly two decades. He often skipped mandated treatment, abandoned his medication, and repeatedly turned back to drugs and the streets—despite knowing, and at times being warned, of the dangerous consequences of drug-induced psychosis. Cathy believed that Senate Bill 43 might have intercepted people like her assailant earlier, before the violence occurred.

SB 43 was passed by the California Legislature in October 2023. That same year, Los Angeles County delayed its implementation until January 1, 2026, to allow more time for resource and infrastructure development. The law expands the definition of "gravely disabled" to include those whose severe substance use disorder or co-occurring mental illness and SUD leaves them unable to maintain personal safety or obtain necessary medical care, in addition to food, clothing, or shelter.

In plain terms, SB 43 gives clinicians and courts clearer authority to intervene when someone's illness has eroded judgment long before they reach a breaking point. “We voted for a lifeline,” Cathy said. “The county is fine handing out needles and pipes. But they won't take responsibility for protecting the community. That's not treatment—it's enabling.”

On Sept. 16, Los Angeles County supervisors convened with the Department of Mental Health to determine whether the county was prepared to implement SB 43. Inside Kenneth Hall, county health leaders laid out a plan. They said a cross-department steering committee began work in early 2024; six work groups designed new training modules, mapped the “gravely disabled” client journey, built discharge-planning and care-planning tools, aligned court forms with the law, and stood up a public-facing SB 43 website.

Officials said 114 implementation tasks were on schedule and that more than 5,000 professionals authorized to write holds would complete updated training by year's end. They told the board they believe in the first year they could take in “0-75 people.” They also described the risks. With no new state funding, an uptick in locked-bed placements could strain county budgets. Integrating substance-use treatment into facilities that historically offered only mental-health care will require new billing pathways and workforce training.

Supervisor Lindsey Horvath pressed staff on whether a forecast of roughly 75 additional people in year one justifies a two-year delay after passage. The gap between public expectation and likely outcomes, she said, must be confronted honestly. For residents who live with the daily consequences of untreated illness, that gap is not theoretical.

In Venice, David has spent years in a makeshift encampment outside Westminster Dog Park, steps from the now-shuttered “Bridge Home” site. Neighbors and outreach teams describe a man in his 30s whose psychiatric crises have escalated: shouting episodes, threats to passersby, and fires. According to multiple neighbors, his tent exploded on two occasions, once igniting a streetside tree and another time burning a parked car; LAPD locked down Main Street after the second fire. David no longer has a tent. He sleeps in a cardboard box.

“He never moved for three solid years,” said a neighbor who asked to have her name withheld for fear of retaliation. “We watched his mental state deteriorate—volatile, unpredictable. One day he's quiet; the next he's screaming at parents walking kids to school.” Neighbors say he is known on the block as “the Sweeper” because he paces and sweeps the sidewalk for hours, hoarding as many as a dozen brooms at a time.

The encounters have turned dangerous. Last Labor Day, David pepper-sprayed the area's Senior Lead Officer, Monique Contreras; LAPD swarmed the block, arrested him, and he disappeared for several months. “When he returned, we were told there wasn’t much police could do if he refused help.” Neighbors tried to intervene long before that. A local business owner offered David paid work after noticing the constant sweeping; it didn’t stick. Neighbors say they spent a year emailing and meeting with county staff, including a homelessness deputy in Supervisor Lindsey Horvath's office, asking whether conservatorship might apply. She filed multiple referrals with service providers, including St. Joseph Center. “Everyone was polite,” she said, “but nothing changed. The answer was always some version of: if he doesn’t want to go, we can’t make him.”

Safety became a neighborhood project. Residents created a text thread during the pandemic—now more than 30 people strong—to warn each other about flare-ups and check on kids walking to Westminster Elementary. Several households hired private patrols. “Venice is a special place. We want to help our neighbors who are struggling. But leaving a clearly ill man in a cardboard box because it’s ‘too hard’ to help him—that’s not compassion. That’s abandonment.”

In March 2024, families in Santa Monica and Venice were jolted when a 6-year-old girl and, less than an hour later, a 7-year-old boy were assaulted in separate incidents authorities described as random; a suspect was arrested after witnesses and police described him as homeless and acting erratically. The children survived. “You can’t explain to your child why someone they’ve never met would do that,” one told me afterward. “You just wonder what could have been done before it got to this point.”

County leaders say SB 43 was never a “silver bullet.” It won’t empty encampments. It won’t flood courts with conservatorship cases. What it can do, they argue, is tighten the clinical threshold so trained evaluators have a lawful path to act when illness obliterates self-preservation—especially where severe addiction or co-occurring disorders drive the danger. The rest comes down to execution: training fidelity, bed capacity, step-down housing, continuity of care, and equity safeguards so new authority doesn’t replicate old injustices.

Cathy listens to that argument and returns to the promise she thought voters endorsed. “We voted for a lifeline,” she says. “And then they don’t do anything, and then they have a meeting and go, ‘Okay, we’ll… do this.’ Meanwhile I’m home-bound half the time. Taking out the trash takes everything I have. I look both ways down the sidewalk and sometimes I run back upstairs because someone out there looks dangerous.”

Her finances collapsed after the attack. PTSD made work impossible; COVID layoffs sealed it. “I could’ve earned more if I’d worked a couple more years,” she says. “Now I’m choosing between supplements my doctors want me on and rent.” On bad days she skips errands, afraid of the unknown between her apartment and the elevator. On worse days the news itself sends her spiraling. “It makes me crazy,” she says plainly. “I stay up on it, and it makes me crazy.”

She does not argue that SB 43 should “criminalize homelessness,” a phrase county officials used repeatedly Sept. 16 while stressing civil rights. She argues that it should prevent victimization—of the public and of people whose illnesses leave them incapable of caring for themselves. “Isn’t safety number one?” she asks. “Isn’t our government’s first duty to keep people safe? That’s why people supported this.”

Outside the hearing, Los Feliz resident Tom Rivera voiced a similar frustration. “People here aren’t scared of homelessness,” he said. “They’re scared of untreated mental illness turning violent. SB 43 was supposed to be the tool to stop that. If the county isn’t ready, what was the point of passing it?”

The county insists it will be ready by Jan. 1, 2026. Training calendars are set. Court materials are being updated. New beds and step-down placements are opening in phases. Officials say they will publish the data and adjust if disparities emerge.

Cathy hears the plan and measures it against the life she now lives: the sleeplessness, the flashbacks, the shrinking perimeter of a day. “You never know when it’s going to happen,” she says. “Ask people like me, awake at five in the morning with an alarm blaring and a man with a knife at my face. Ask the parents whose kids were hit on the boardwalk. Ask the neighbors walking past David’s tent.”

She pauses. “It passed,” she repeats. “What happened?”