New downtown Portland hub for street outreach in the works
PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — A new hub centralizing a partnership between law enforcement and outreach workers is the latest development in the ongoing fentanyl emergency for central Portland. It’s all thanks to $683,000 of funding from the City of Portland, Multnomah County and the State of Oregon.
This partnership between the Mental Health and Addiction Association of Oregon (MHAAO) and the Portland Police Bureau’s Bike Squad has proven to be successful in getting more people off the streets and into treatment ever since it launched as a pilot program back in December of last year.
“Folks who are doing peer work and outreach work, partnering with law enforcement has been incredibly effective, really showing it as a way to fast track folks who are ready to engage to access both services and treatment,” said Agency Administrator to Unified Command from Multnomah County Abbey Stamp.
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Now both outreach teams and law enforcement will have a physical space where they can coordinate efforts to help people struggling with addiction, connect them with services for treatment, housing options and even just build trust with others.
“I think that the first day we had no idea what was going to happen. Halfway through, we realized we were on to something good,” said John Karp-Evans, the operations and program director at the Behavioral Health Resource Center for MHAAO.
Karp-Evans directs the outreach team that’s based on a peer support model, meaning the people helping others have gone through similar experiences. This serves as knowledge that bridges the gap with law enforcement.
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“That lived experience informs programs that work because we can offer things all day long but if they’re not something the service user wants, needs and can have access to, then might as well not be available at all,” said Janie Gullickson, the executive director of MHAAO.
The $683,000 will fund four outreach teams, a vehicle, a data specialist and it will be used for leasing space out of a building in order to build the hub.
KOIN 6 News asked Stamp whether the funds would be enough to get started on these plans. This was her response:
“I don’t know if what we’re doing as a community right now meets the demands. There’re not enough human beings to engage in this really important heart work to make our community safer and help folks get the services they need.”
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Karp-Evans agreed that “accessing care in our community is challenging.” However, he added that he believes the law enforcement and outreach partnerships have had promising results so far.
“The access points are not straight lines. And we’ve seen through this project with the guide of peer support, with providers, with law enforcement, getting everyone on the same page, we can only improve those access points,” he said.
The new hub bringing together outreach specialists and law enforcement will be located in the heart of downtown Portland from a leased space at Mercy Corps’ headquarters.
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Though the ultimate goal of the partnership will be to help people find the services they need, the hub in question will not be client-facing or a place where people can go to receive any kind of assistance. Rather, the space at the Mercy Corps building will only be for law enforcement and outreach professionals, providing a space for them to operate.
Multnomah County commissioners have pressed unified command for solutions for East County as well during the emergency. The data collected over the next year will help determine how to best expand those programs to other neighborhoods.
“As we figure out those data points for a specific area in the future, something that can be scaled to other parts of our community,” Karp-Evans said.
Until that point though, the MHAAO is focusing on who they can help today.
“Every life changed, every life impacted is going to be success,” Gullickson said.
At this moment, the program is still operating in a pilot phase. However, Gullickson and Karp-Evans said they’re working on the plan to fully launch it soon.
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