Ritter Center celebrated the grand opening of its new Health & Wellness Center at 800 A Street in San Rafael on October 15, and Gov. Gavin Newsom showed up to help mark the occasion. The larger facility is expected to let the nonprofit serve approximately 25% more people than it could at its old location, bringing medical care, behavioral health treatment and housing support together under one roof.
According to Downtown San Rafael, the grand-opening speakers included Newsom, Assemblymember Damon Connolly, Marin County Board of Supervisors President Eric Lucan, Supervisor Mary Sackett and San Rafael Mayor Kate Colin. The new center brings primary medical care, behavioral health and substance-use treatment together with case management, housing support and food assistance, all under one roof, per the same source. During the Marin County stop, Newsom spoke about what he described as a new milestone in reducing homelessness statewide and expanding access to behavioral health services, according to NBC Bay Area.
Newsom framed the opening as evidence that California's big bet on behavioral health funding is working. “The investment voters made by voting yes on the bond measure is paying off,” the governor said, according to NBC Bay Area's report. Ritter Center is celebrating what NBC Bay Area described as a new $14 million health and wellness center, resulting from voter-enacted Proposition 1, the $6.4 billion bond that California voters passed by a narrow margin in 2024, as reported by CalMatters.
How the Project Came Together
The San Rafael project was made possible in part by a $10.44 million State of California grant, Downtown San Rafael reports. Separately, CalMatters notes that Ritter Center received nearly $10.5 million intended to open 1,370 treatment slots, part of the broader Proposition 1 rollout; the dossier does not clarify whether that figure describes the same award or a different slice of project costs. Ritter Center's own 2023 project plan put the total estimated cost at $14.5 million, including a $6.6 million building purchase, and described a facility with six exam rooms, new medical equipment, and dedicated rooms for individual and group therapy.
That same 2023 plan said the center's food pantry, then serving more than 1,800 households and individuals experiencing homelessness, was slated to double in size. Ritter Center currently serves more than 2,500 homeless and precariously housed clients per year, according to CalMatters. The San Rafael opening follows a wave of state funding: in May 2025, Newsom announced $3.3 billion in grants for more than 120 projects statewide, expected to help create 5,000 inpatient treatment beds and nearly 22,000 outpatient spaces within several years, as reported by the Marin Independent Journal.
A Mixed Picture on the Ground in Marin
Not every Proposition 1 project has gone smoothly. CalMatters reported that nine of the first 124 funded projects were delayed, with new completion dates ranging from summer 2026 to summer 2028, and one project was cancelled outright. The statewide homelessness numbers Newsom touts also tell a layered story: the Sacramento Bee reported California's estimated unsheltered homeless population fell from 123,974 in 2024 to 108,125 in 2026, a drop of almost 13%, though those figures were preliminary and could shift as more counties report. A separate Sacramento Bee review of HUD data found California's homeless population had risen 16.2% from 2019 to 2026.
Locally, the trend lines diverge further. Marin County's homeless population increased 3.5% to 1,128 people between January 2024 and January 2026, the Marin Independent Journal reported, while the number of people experiencing chronic homelessness in the county rose sharply, up 102% to 438 over that same two-year period. One bright spot: Marin's count of homeless veterans dropped from 49 in 2024 to just 11 this year. Marin County's own 2026 Point-in-Time Count executive summary described the overall picture as one of progress mixed with persistent challenges.
Statewide Numbers Still Being Debated
CalMatters reported that California's estimated total homelessness fell 3.4% statewide to an estimated 175,836 people in 2026, while cautioning that point-in-time counts are not exact and that counties use differing or changing methodologies from year to year. That caveat matters in a county like Marin, where the overall homeless count ticked up even as specific categories, like veteran homelessness, improved dramatically. For Ritter Center, the new A Street facility represents a concrete, local expansion of services regardless of how the statewide totals ultimately shake out.
