By Amanda Fritz

Many Portlanders believe Wapato Jail is a simple and logical answer to our community's mental health crisis. They argue that Wapato was built with a clinical component and should be used as a residential substance abuse treatment center and mental health facility for people who would otherwise be incarcerated or living outside. Just do it, they say, it's secure and isolated away from neighborhoods.

But legal, logistical and philosophical barriers make this impossible.

Legally, zoning limits the use of this site to "heavy industrial." An exception was made to the zoning requirement for Wapato because the facility would be used as a jail, and people would not be free to come and go. But this exception would not apply to an addiction services or mental health facility. The City of Portland could theoretically change the zoning, but when council members tried to put Right 2 Dream Too on an industrial site of less than a quarter acre, our decision was overturned by the state.

Also, legal covenants, codes and restrictions governed by the Port of Portland and affect adjoining businesses prohibit using the facility for anything other than heavy industry or as a jail.

Logistically, there is no public transportation to or from Wapato. It takes three hours with a combination of buses and walking to reach the facility from downtown. There are no services nearby, meaning long commutes to doctors, grocers, restaurants, work or school. Many people who experience homelessness and/or mental illness have children. Families want to stay in their own neighborhoods, near their own schools and friends -- not in an isolated industrial area.

Perhaps most important, using a jail as a treatment center or mental health facility is inappropriate on philosophical grounds. Putting people experiencing mental illness or homelessness at Wapato could cause additional trauma. Problems at the Unity Center show that even a facility designed and built to help people experiencing mental crises can struggle to provide safe, effective care.

I worked in inpatient psychiatry at Oregon Health & Sciences University for 22 years, on units converted from the old Multnomah County Hospital. We constantly battled to overcome the barriers to building community spirit among psychiatric patients, even in a facility built as a hospital. I can't begin to imagine how staff would create a collaborative and soothing environment in a facility designed to punish people and keep them apart.

Even if all these challenges were magically addressed and Wapato could be transformed into a model treatment center and mental health facility, the county doesn't have the money to operate and maintain it -- unless many other treatment facilities and shelters were closed.

Operating Wapato would require $5 million in additional annual revenue. Data shows that the most cost-effective approaches to solving homelessness are to prevent people from losing their housing - but if they do, to find them new housing as soon as possible.

If the city and county had an additional $5 million, a mass shelter and treatment center would not be the best use of those dollars. Shelters are needed as a stopgap measure. They are not the best use of taxpayers' dollars to address the crisis on our streets. Discussions on Wapato rarely discuss how ongoing revenue for operations might be generated.

Jordan Schnitzer, the current Wapato owner, said, "Dream first, then get practical." But government shouldn't operate that way.

Let's learn from history. Government doesn't have the luxury of creating something without a solid plan for how to pay for it. That's why Wapato was never used as a jail in the first place. Encouraged at the time by the sheriff, voters supported building the facility. But then they voted to limit property taxes. That prevented Multnomah County from generating the revenue to operate and maintain the jail, which has sat vacant ever since.

With Wapato in private ownership, it makes even less sense to find a new public use for the jail. It's time to lay the Wapato Wish to rest, convert it into a warehouse or other industrial use and move on. Wapato is totally inappropriate for a mental health care treatment facility.

Multnomah County Commissioner Dr. Sharon Meieran is working on a systemic review and improvement plan for the county's mental health care programs. The Joint Office on Homeless Services is providing housing to thousands of Portlanders every year.

There is no magical instant solution for these needs. Let's stop pretending Wapato is it.

-- Amanda Fritz was elected to serve on the Portland City Council in 2008.

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