March 27, 2013 — Clackamas County Sheriff Capt. Chris Hoy is a big, burly bear of a man but when he told legislators of his mother’s fate, he burst into tears.
He was a freshman at Willamette University when his mother developed a mental illness and had to be admitted to the Oregon State Hospital.
“The stigma of mental illness was so great that I would sneak away from my dorm at Willamette to visit her at the hospital. My friends and professors didn’t know where I was going. I was too embarrassed to tell anyone,” Hoy told the House Human Services Committee on Monday. “Those visits were awful.”
“She didn’t need to be at the hospital, but there were no alternatives for her at the time. Sadly, she never left the hospital and died as a patient there,” he said.
Rep. Carolyn Tomei, D-Milwaukie, said there are 30 patients at the Oregon State Hospital who would be free to leave except the state has no transition housing available for them in their communities.
“People go to the state hospital to get well. They do not go there to live,” said Tomei, who chairs the Human Services Committee. “We need people to have the keys to their own doors.”
Tomei is pushing for a bipartisan bill that would help Oregon increase the housing options for people recovering from mental illness by providing state funding to assist with the start-up costs of such projects.
House Bill 3332 would provide 20 percent of construction and 50 percent of the start-up costs for the homes including expenses like furniture and staff training. The bill does not specify the amount of funding, but Tomei asked committee members to attend the budget hearings in the Joint Subcommittee on Ways & Means and call for as much funding as possible.
She also called for a quick vote on HB 3332, which passed the committee unanimously. Committee Vice Chairman Andy Olson, R-Albany, is a co-sponsor and Sen. Jeff Kruse, R-Roseburg, is the chief sponsor in the Senate.
“I was quite taken with the chair’s plea,” said Rep. Vic Gilliam, R-Silverton, throwing his support behind Tomei.
Chris Bouneff, the executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness chapter in Portland, said he would like at least $6 million next biennium — the amount the Legislature removed from a special trust fund for community mental health housing last biennium to patch a hole in the general coffers.
Oregon was investigated by the U.S. Department of Justice to see whether it was meeting requirements under the 1999 Supreme Court ruling Olmstead vs. L.C., which stated that warehousing people with mental disabilities in institutions was a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act if these people can be reasonably placed in community settings.
The state signed a settlement in 2012 with the federal government to avoid a lawsuit, and the first federal report is due April 1 — next Monday.
“I’m anxious to hear from the DOJ on April 1st,” Tomei said. “I think they’re not going to give us a great mark with what we are doing with community mental health.”
Bouneff said NAMI asked for HB 3332 after having discussions with mental health providers across the state to zero in on Oregon’s key deficits in serving people with mental healthcare needs. Housing rose to the top of everyone’s lists.
“We have people backing up in our ERs and our psychiatric wards and they’re there much longer than is necessary or prudent because they can’t get access to long-term care needs such as the Oregon State Hospital or some of our sub-acute care centers around the state,” Bouneff said.
He said the Oregon State Hospital has a backlog because there aren’t enough step-down housing placements for its patients in residential treatment, and patients are stuck in residential treatment because there is a shortage of independent housing.
Hoy said he now works as a sheriff’s deputy in Clackamas County Community Corrections, and the state’s jails also serve as a default warehouse for people with mental illnesses. He said 2,000 out of Clackamas’ 14,000 inmates are prescribed psychiatric medications and more than half have substance abuse withdrawal from addictions.
HB 3332 would subsidize housing projects across the spectrum of needs for people with mental illnesses. Bouneff said much of the construction for the housing could be funded with private sources, but builders need state assistance because of the weak overall housing market.
“There are some providers that have the capacity to fund the whole construction process — but they are few and far between,” said Kevin McChesney, the president of the Oregon Residential Provider Association.
Ken Milner testified that he was attending college for a degree in social work in the late 1980s when he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. “My life imploded,” he said. “All I had left was my car and my clothes.”
Milner said he spent years bouncing back and forth between living in his car and living with his parents cross-country. Finally, in 2000, he discovered Sequoia Mental Health Services, which offered a group home for homeless men with mental illness. They helped him get treatment and a job, and he later moved into his own place.
Now he volunteers with NAMI, providing support for others, and intends to return to college to finish his degree.
“I take care of my physical health. I’ve even started dating,” Milner said. “I was able to find my way out of dysfunction and the start of that was finding housing.”
