Arizona’s public behavioral health care system, which serves some 150,000 mentally ill and vulnerable state residents, is wrestling with a number of urgent challenges. In addition to budget cuts resulting from the current economic crisis, and the demands of a 28-year-old class-action lawsuit, the system has been repeatedly criticized in several areas, including for inadequate staff, data, housing support, and crisis services. On July 22, a panel of professionals who play key roles in the system discussed these and other issues before some 300 behavioral health providers, supervisors, and policymakers at the annual Summer Institute hosted by Arizona State University’s Center for Applied Behavioral Health Policy. This paper provides an abbreviated report of that discussion, which was partially designed and moderated by ASU’s Morrison Institute for Public Policy.

Severe and widespread budget cuts in behavioral health and substance abuse services for lower-income Arizonans who don’t qualify for AHCCCS have already taken effect across the state. Even before these cuts were implemented, it was clear that the publicly-supported behavioral health system in our state was not adequately serving many Arizonans who needed mental health or substance use disorder treatment. This paper represents an effort by Arizona State University’s Centers for Applied Behavioral Health Policy and the Morrison Institute for Public Policy to promote and enrich Arizona’s public dialogue about these problems and potential solutions.

This study summarizes and analyzes the findings of a statewide survey conducted last year of samples of homeless individuals in the Phoenix and Tucson areas and across the state. The aim of this report is to join with other, ongoing efforts to develop effective policies concerning such issues as job training, treatment for the mentally ill and Arizona’s critical need for affordable housing. Hopefully, it will help politicians and policymakers talk more openly and productively about a pervasive social problem that is both glaringly obvious and largely invisible.

In February of 1998, the Pima County Board of Supervisors launched what has evolved into the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan (SDCP) -- a comprehensive effort to protect the Sonoran Desert, guide growth and rationalize land development in the metropolitan Tucson region. Proponents of this planning process maintained that the project would reconcile conflicts between human activities and conservation, providing benefits for both wildlife and economic development. Critics, however, have increasingly alleged that implementing such an initiative will adversely affect land and housing markets, increase taxes and create problems of housing affordability. Over time a pressing need has consequently grown for objective information about the possible fiscal and economic impacts of the conservation programs being assembled by Pima County. This report addresses that need. It is a tool in the form of an impartial framework for assessment that government officials, environmentalists, business people and the general public can use for debate and decision-making.