Austinities visit the Austin Public Library in Austin on Wednesday, July 3, 2019.
Lola Gomez
Daniel Vasquez had already cycled through the jail and a mental health diversion program before he allegedly assaulted a stranger last month at Austin’s Central Library, an attack that left a 62-year-old man with a life-altering brain injury. In the aftermath, the debate centered on a false binary of options. Law enforcement advocates argued that prosecution for Vasquez’s previous crimes would have kept the public safe, while Travis County District Attorney José Garza said that incarceration would have been short-lived and ineffective.
Both sides are arguing within the limits of a system that is not built to handle people like Vasquez. For those with severe, untreated mental illness, neither prosecution nor short-term diversion reliably protects the public or leads to long-term stability. What’s missing is a third option: state-funded residential care for people who cannot safely live on their own but do not belong behind bars or at a state mental health hospital.
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Vasquez’s case is not an outlier. Deepak Kandel, who was accused of fatally stabbing an innocent bystander on a CapMetro bus in May 2025, has a history of mental illness and was deemed incompetent to stand trial last August. His case, like Vasquez’s, underscores a system that repeatedly fails to intervene in a meaningful way before tragedy occurs. The consequences are increasingly visible — not just in high-profile incidents, but on streets across Austin, where some people are suffering in plain view from untreated conditions.
It’s unacceptable that untreated mental illness can turn a public outing into tragedy. Yet these and other cases point to the same structural failure: Some people with serious conditions are caught in the “revolving door” where mental health and criminal justice intersect, never reaching the long-term stability that would improve public safety.
An effort underway in the Texas Health and Human Services Commission aims to address this gap. Through an addendum to last year’s state budget bill known as Rider 56, the commission must study and propose a pilot program of “residential intermediate care services for individuals with severe and persistent mental illness.” The study is assessing the “existing unmet needs” of people who have been released from treatment programs but are not appropriate to be placed in the community.
It’s imperative that the commission develop a comprehensive, effective program — and that the Legislature fund it. The commission has already put notable resources toward the effort, with more than 40 policy, program, data and subject matter experts working on the study.
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As part of the effort, the commission surveyed hundreds of stakeholders across the mental health and criminal justice systems. Their 475 responses, which we obtained through an open records request and analyzed using ChatGPT, point to a striking level of agreement about what’s missing.
Consensus among jail administrators, advocates and families is not easy to reach. Yet across those groups, when asked about the most significant barriers facing people being discharged from treatment programs, the top answers included the lack of appropriate facilities. The second most significant barrier, according to those surveyed, was funding limitations.
The responses converged on a clear solution to the problem: high-support housing with round-the-clock staffing for those who no longer meet criteria for a state mental health hospital. And, of course, the funding to pull it off.
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Now view Vasquez’s situation in light of those responses: He was put in Travis County’s mental health diversion program for charges of misdemeanor assault in 2024. He completed six months of treatment at a South Austin rehabilitation clinic and complied with the requirements to get the charges dismissed. Officials could not give details of the care he received, but his completion of the program implies he was improving.
But Vasquez had nowhere to go. After his release last June, he ended up living on the street. Any progress he made in the diversion program was unlikely to last without a safe, supportive place to live after his release.
For too long, the state has pushed the responsibility for mental health care to counties, and it is not working. It creates a system in which counties that try to provide mental health services, such as Travis County, can become overloaded with people from counties that do not.
“It’s ridiculous that the state does so little,” Travis County Judge Andy Brown told us.
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A 2024 state auditor’s report found that Travis County had the second-highest number of repeat offenders who ended up on the competency restoration waitlist, with 676 since 2018. People found mentally unfit to stand trial are given just enough treatment to restore their competency so they can resolve their charges — only to backslide, re-offend and require another round of court-ordered mental health treatment.
Only Dallas County saw more pass through its “revolving door,” with 808. These and the other three counties in the top five — Bexar, Harris and Tarrant — all have some form of voluntary mental health diversion programs and involuntary assisted outpatient treatment, a court-ordered program to help people adhere to their treatment plans.
A man holds his phone while talking about how he lived on and off the streets for nearly 30 years. For people exiting mental health diversion programs, having a safe, supportive place to live is key to maintaining stability, the Editorial Board writes.
Ricardo Brazziell/Ricardo B. Brazziell
Here in Travis County, at least, the program can’t reach all who need it. With the capacity to only serve 45 participants at a time, assisted outpatient treatment services at Integral Care, the county’s mental health authority, “remain limited in their ability to reach all individuals who could benefit, particularly those with the most complex and persistent behavioral health needs,” spokesperson Munji Nfor said.
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Rider 56 is not perfect. Advocates say an “and” in the criteria for participation in the pilot program should have been an “or,” meaning a person must meet certain arrest, incarceration and hospitalization conditions for eligibility — setting such a high bar that few may actually qualify. Clearly that crucial conjunction should be fixed to ensure the program reaches those who need it.
If developed correctly, the Rider 56 effort could create the state-level mental health facilities that Texas desperately needs. Lawmakers must ensure the momentum continues and the funding follows.
Support for this type of approach cuts across the usual political divides. A spokesperson for the statewide police union coalition known as CLEAT told us it “will support legislation next session to add beds that will facilitate these dangerous individuals remaining in custody on an involuntary basis.”
Garza made the same appeal in a different tone: “Until the state commits to properly funding mental health resources, we will continue to see individuals cycling in and out of our jails and courts who are not getting the resources they need,” he told us in an email.
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If what happened in the library in March can occur with the police chief in the building, it can happen anywhere. This is as much about public safety as it is about humane treatment of a vulnerable population.
Jail administrators don’t want to be the de facto mental health care provider in their counties. Advocates want to stop seeing people fall through the cracks. And families want their loved ones to get better.
The state of Texas is big enough to solve this problem. Developing and funding a robust Rider 56 program is an important first step.
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