Multnomah County leaders hope a new building they bought earlier this year could finally fill a void that has drawn federal scrutiny and outrage from advocates: Homeless people have no place to go that isn’t a clinic, emergency room or jail.

They want to turn the Bushong & Co. building at 333 S.W. Park Ave. into a walk-in center for the thousands of people in the county who are on the streets and struggling with mental illness and addiction.

County elected and health officials envision a place where people could do laundry, take a shower, use the computer, charge a phone and access mental health services. They also intend to include transitional housing there for people who need somewhere to stabilize their mental health.

The plan will likely take more than a year to realize – not only to design the center but to coordinate with Portland police, health agencies and other crucial players to make it work.

“If you’re at a point where you don’t know where to turn, don’t have a place to go, experiencing mental health issues, you’re living on the street, where right now can you go?” said Commissioner Sharon Meieran, a former emergency room doctor who spearheaded a review of the mental health system that called for more peer-run services and other changes.

“There literally is nowhere,” Meieran said. “You can go to the library.”

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The empty Bushong warehouse is essentially a shell that county workers are assessing with the help of business groups, mental health advocates and others to see if renovations are possible or if it must be torn down and replaced.

Developer Tom Cody of firm Project^ sold it to the county for $5.8 million after donating the space in 2016 as a winter shelter focused on older and disabled men and veterans. The county also bought an adjacent parking lot to provide outdoor space to clients who might want to smoke or congregate without gathering in front of nearby businesses.

The sale has drawn some criticism from a developer building a hotel next door who says the commissioners have invested money without a concrete plan or dedicated funding to make their vision happen.

But Multnomah County Chair Deborah Kafoury said the spot and space allow the county to forge something to suit people’s needs instead of trying to retrofit an old office building that doesn’t have enough bathrooms or other crucial amenities.

The final price tag will depend on the design and is expected to be a money-saver in the long-term, county officials said, because it could reduce the number of homeless people in the Oregon State Hospital or jail-- both considered the most expensive places to house people on the streets.

“Having a shell allows us to be creative,” Kafoury said. “This has the potential to make a real strong impact not only on the downtown community but the lives of people who are suffering on the streets.”

The walk-in center’s housing will account for some of the planned beds lost when the county terminated a lease it signed in 2017 with Budget Lodge in Southwest Portland. The county had intended to use the hotel’s 22 single-occupancy rooms for people with mental health or addiction issues but found extensive problems that could pose health risks for anyone staying there.

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County officials expect the walk-in center to take some of the people discharged from the Unity Center for Behavioral Health who are homeless – about a quarter of the center’s patient load.

Many Unity patients shouldn’t be there to begin with, advocates say, but it’s a better alternative to jail or emergency rooms. Unity became the city’s answer to a federal settlement that required the area provide place for people in mental distress to go.

Four Portland hospital systems consolidated their separate mental health facilities into one center that allows people to walk in. But the doors lock behind anyone who admits themselves, which officials now say misses the spirit of the kind of facility Portland needs.

“We really need an environment that doesn’t seem clinical or medical,” said Neal Rotman, who runs the county’s community mental health program.

Rotman has pushed for funding for a walk-in center like this for years. The nonprofit Cascadia Behavioral Health runs a walk-in clinic on Southeast Division, but Rotman said it doesn’t serve a demographic drawn to downtown who might not be ready to see a doctor yet.

The proposed center would allow visitors to choose how much engagement they want. If they just want to use the computer and socialize for a few hours, that’s fine.

But supporters hope the center’s staff members, who are intended to all be people who have dealt with mental health troubles, addiction or homelessness, would build relationships with visitors over time and help connect them to services.

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Portland has few, if any, peer-run mental health services -- a need identified in an third-party overview of the county’s mental health system last year.

Janie Gullickson, now executive director of the Mental Health & Addiction Association of Oregon, said she spurned clinics and places with new furniture and mental health professionals when she was homeless. She didn’t feel welcome, she said.

“I bounced from the street to emergency departments to a lot of psychiatric wards to jail to eventually prison. I did that whole cycle for years,” Gullickson said.

Gullickson’s association provides peer services and is part of a committee to help shape what goes into what’s being called Behavioral Health Resource Center.

She wants a place for people to go that isn’t the same criminal justice revolving door that she experienced. Visitors can work with people who have vetted the services themselves, she said, and make steps toward recovery and housing, even if those steps are small and slow.

“That’s a position that puts them in the driver's seat and in more control of the situation,” Gullickson said. “That’s empowering, instead of continuing to run until the cops catch you.”

More than half of all of people arrested in Portland in 2017 were homeless – mostly for low-level crimes, an investigation by The Oregonian/OregonLive found.

While police officers have said they’re not trained to be first responders to homeless people in crisis and try to use arrest as a last resort, thousands of homeless people end up in the Multnomah County Jail every year and a majority of them are likely to be re-arrested within three years.

Multnomah County Health Director Patricia Charles-Heathers wants to redirect many of those people to the walk-in center. She said they would be better served outside a cell and that it would reduce the burden on police to assess their needs.

“It’s easier to do a drop-off than to do a booking,” Charles-Heather said.

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But it will take police buy-in.

Earlier attempts to have police take more people to the Cascadia clinic largely failed -- some say because of the distance and cumbersome process to hand off the person in custody.

But county officials hope this time will be different and said they have had some initial positive response from the Police Bureau.

“It’s not lost on officers that the jail is not the best place for someone, especially for someone who needs mental health treatment,” said Lt. Casey Hettman, who works on the bureau’s Behavorial Health Unit – a team dedicated to handling people with mental health issues that cause them to come in contact with police.

But Hettman’s unit has only three teams pairing an officer with a mental health worker. The teams handle average caseloads of 12 to 15 people at a time.

Police data shows about 9 percent of all calls that officers deal with involve a mental health component, meaning the majority of those calls fall to patrol officers who aren't highly trained in behavioral health intervention.

They must make an on-the-spot evaluation about any crime committed and where the person should then go. Officers and bureau officials maintain that most officers don’t want to arrest a homeless person whose mental health seems to be causing the problem.

But police don’t have many other options for someone whose issues don't appear to rise to treatment at an emergency room or Unity. So, often they're charged with low-level crimes and taken to jail.

Hettman said he would welcome a place that wants to work with police to offer an alternative.

“There’s this narrative that officers are just looking for the easy way out,” he said. “In that case, jail wouldn’t be the answer because it’s not solving the problem and it’s not preventing future police contacts.”

And cutting the number of people with mental illness sent to the jail has added benefits, Hettman said, such as reducing the risk that an officer will use force to make an arrest.

“In the past, there’s been a hesitancy of the appearance of collaboration or working with law enforcement,” Hettman said. “I would want them to be supportive of being a place for police to drop people off.”