House proposes $51M for mental health treatment beds amid worsening shortages

House lawmakers are proposing more than $51 million to expand and maintain mental health treatment bed capacity. It’s a notable increase that nevertheless underscores how far Florida still has to go to address a severe and growing shortage.

The House’s Fiscal Year 2026-27 budget proposal includes $49.4 million in recurring funds and $1.7 million in nonrecurring funds for the Department of Children and Families (DCF) to maintain and expand bed capacity at state mental health treatment facilities.

But more than three-quarters of that funding — $38.3 million — would be held in reserve, requiring lawmakers to approve its release after DCF submits extensive data on facility performance, staffing, waitlists and treatment outcomes.

The proposal builds on prior funding increases but falls short of fully resolving a crisis that has worsened dramatically in recent years.

As Florida Politics reported in August, nearly every bed in Florida’s state-run mental health facilities is consistently occupied, leaving hundreds of criminal defendants deemed incompetent to stand trial stuck in jail for months beyond the legal 15-day transfer deadline.

As of mid-2025, 772 defendants were waiting for placement, with average waits exceeding four months.

Florida currently has just over 3,000 state mental health treatment beds — far below projected demand. A state-commissioned analysis found facilities operating at about 98% occupancy and warned Florida will need at least 1,602 additional forensic beds within five years just to maintain that already strained level.

To reach a more sustainable occupancy rate of 85%, the state would need more than 2,000 new beds.

Against that backdrop, the House proposal represents both progress and restraint. The roughly $51 million earmark far exceeds what lawmakers approved between 2020 and 2022, when annual bed capacity funding ranged from $10 million to $14.6 million. It also surpasses the $35 million lawmakers approved for Fiscal Year 2023-24 and the $9 million approved in nonrecurring funds the following year.

But it’s below the $78.6 million earmarked last year — of which only $19.6 million was immediately available — and remains markedly below the $95.4 million DCF requested to sustain and expand bed capacity, continuing a longstanding pattern of lawmakers appropriating less than agency officials say is needed.

The decision to reserve most of the funding reflects legislative caution as well as concern about efficiency and outcomes. House lawmakers are requiring DCF to provide detailed metrics on waitlists, staffing shortages, treatment quality and facility costs before releasing most of the funds. The agency must also submit a statewide assessment by January 2027 identifying locations for future bed expansion and estimating staffing and operational needs.

Further, the proposed House budget would authorize planning for a new 600-bed hospital unit within a future correctional facility that would include mental health services. While that expansion could eventually increase capacity, it remains years away from completion.

The stakes for this problem are high. In 2006, a Pinellas County Judge fined then-DCF Secretary Lucy Hadi $80,000 for inmate-to-bed delays affecting 237 inmates statewide, less than a third of the count from late last year under current Secretary Taylor Hatch.

Similar scenarios have triggered legal action in other states and led to at least one nuclear verdict. In 2023, a federal court fined the state of Washington $100 million for violating inmates’ due process rights by delaying competency services and failing to add enough mental health treatment facility beds.

Other, more modest rulings occurred in California, Maryland, Minnesota and Utah.

Then there’s the human cost. In 2021, 37-year-old Tristan Murphy of Charlotte County killed himself with a chainsaw while suffering a schizophrenic break after spending 63 days in prison on a felony littering charge. The tragedy led to a law passed last year to expand diversion and probation options for mentally ill inmates.

Some incidents were non-lethal but left permanent damage, including a 2019 case where a man cut off his penis and flushed it down a Broward County jail toilet while in solitary confinement.

While the House proposal marks a significant investment compared to other past years, the scale of Florida’s mental health bed shortage suggests it would slow — but not solve — a crisis decades in the making.