PORTLAND, Ore. — Multnomah County has delayed the opening of its drug deflection center and will no longer meet the planned target date of Sept. 1, the day drug recriminalization takes effect in Oregon. The facility, officially titled the Coordinated Care Pathway Center, will now open in mid- to late October, county chair Jessica Vega Pederson announced Monday morning.
The delay is necessary for the center to reach the necessary staffing numbers and training levels to operate, and will allow more time for neighborhood engagement, Vega Pederson's office said in a news release. The county plans to offer deflection through "mobile outreach" until the facility in Southeast Portland opens its doors.
"We want to get this right," Vega Pederson said at a news conference, adding that it became clear in the past week that the county wouldn't be about to meet the Sept. 1 target.
Oregon House Bill 4002, which passed earlier this year, partially rolls back Measure 110 and reestablishes hard drug possession as a misdemeanor criminal offense, but it also allows counties to set up deflection programs in which people arrested for simple possession of hard drugs can be given the option to avoid jail time if they accept treatment.
A physical deflection center isn't a requirement, but Multnomah County has opted for that model so that police can have a designated place to drop off arrested drug users at all hours of the day if they accept deflection. The center will initially only offer screenings and connections to treatment and services, but the county's plan calls for the addition of sobering beds and making opioid addiction medication available onsite.
The eventual goal is to expand the center into a replacement for the Portland sobering center that closed in 2020, although that part isn't expected until 2026, and it won't be at the same site — county leaders expect the full-scale facility to be in new building that the county can buy instead of lease.
Police are still going to start enforcing the new drug misdemeanor charge on Sept. 1, Vega Pederson said, and the county still plans to have deflection available starting the same day. Until the center is up and running, the county will dispatch behavioral health providers and specialists to meet with police in the field to conduct referrals and connect deflection participants with services, including by offering transportation to services.
"I've stated we will open the Coordinated Care Pathway Center as long as we are ready and can safely provide deflection services," Vega Pederson said in a statement. "After listening to subject-matter experts, neighbors and the community, we are going to take the additional time we need to open in a way that's safest for the people we are trying to serve, for staff, and for our community."
The county only announced that it had secured the site at 900 SE Sandy Blvd in late June, setting up an extremely compressed timeline to get it up and running by Sept. 1. Contracted operator Tuerk House has begun hiring and training, but Monday's news release said the center's certificate of occupancy won't be issued until Aug. 28 at the earliest.
There were other signs that the development effort was struggling to meet the original Sept. 1 deadline. It was only last week that county leaders released a draft document laying out the plan for how the facility would operate and the timeline to expand it — and the draft is still vague on some details, such as whether people who visit the center will be required to accept transportation away from it when they leave.
That last issue has been a major point of contention for some of the facility's neighbors, who have pushed back on the county's plans during the past few months of rapid development. Nearby residents and businesses have said they haven't been given enough opportunity for input, and have also complained that the county lacks a clear and adequate plan for security around the site.
Earlier this month, a preschool located less than two blocks from the center threatened to sue over the rushed development the site. Attorney David Watnick, who represents the school and is also the parent of a 1-year-old who attends it, sent a letter demanding that the county "immediately pause the project and abandon the artificial September 1 deadline."
Asked at the news conference, Vega Pederson said the lawsuit threat played no role in the decision to delay the opening date.