OPINION | The Behavioral Health Resource Center adds drop-in, showers, laundry and shelter
It’s easy to spot the new Behavioral Health Resource Center downtown at Southwest Park Avenue and Oak Street because it’s adorned with a three-story mural by artist Damon Smyth that follows a person through dreamy escapades with nature.
On Wednesday, Nov. 16, Multnomah County opened the first two floors of the Behavioral Health Resource Center as a day center where people can drop by for a reprieve from the streets. Over the next months, all five floors will be opened for showers, laundry, mental health services, shelter beds and transitional housing.
In stark contrast to Portland City Council’s ill-conceived plans for mass camps that eschew input from people on the streets, Multnomah County is proceeding with competence and extensive input.
“It's a turning point,” Deandre Kenyanjui, Multnomah County’s Office of Consumer Engagement coordinator, described of the County’s effort to listen to “the people who have been most impacted, who had the most experience with the system to influence and build another program.”
The sea-colored furniture, dreamy murals, layout of shelter beds, windows streamlining in daylight — that all is a result of input over several years.
The day center will also be staffed by peer support specialists through the Mental Health and Addiction Association of Oregon. And now, the day center is intended to welcome people for whom few spaces are welcoming.
“Come as you are,” Kenyanjui said.
That’s an offer of potentially life-saving hospitality for people who bide their hours on sidewalks, raw with exhaustion. They will have access to a couch on which to rest, sip a cup of coffee and maybe organize their thoughts. They can hang out in a courtyard where no one could tell them to move along, where, instead, they can regale a friend with a story or vent frustrations.
They can take a shower and maybe cry without anyone witnessing the tears, wash clothes and visit a nurse to check out their feet, chapped and cracked with cold.
Each floor of the Behavioral Health Resource Center offers something more — mental health services, a shelter with 33 beds on the fourth floor and transitional housing with 19 more beds on the fifth floor.
In a decades-long context, this center is a small flicker of the promise of community-based mental health that was not realized after the deinstitutionalization of large mental hospitals in the 1980s and 90s. I thought about this as the Multnomah County Community Mental Health Program Manager Christa Jones described it as not only “a dream come true, but also a promise kept.”
And I thought about this as Multnomah County Commissioner Lori Stegmann leaned toward me, in passing, and said, “We need six more of these,” right after she’d joined fellow commissioners Susheela Jayapal and Chair-elect Jessica Vega Pederson in holding the green ribbon for Chair Deborah Kafoury to cut, opening the building alongside other county and community leaders.
Neither Mayor Ted Wheeler or the city commissioners who’ve demanded Multnomah County fund their mass-camp folly were present.
If you are feeling discouraged by the brusk plans of Portland City Council, remember this: There are better ideas out there, like this, that are happening through other government jurisdictions. I’ll keep writing about them.
I called Stegmann a couple of days later to follow up on her comment. As she walked her dog, she explained that, while the first site is a pilot, she was confident it would work.
“And then we can replicate it throughout the county,” she said.
She discussed how important it was there was art throughout the building, recalling her delight at seeing a mural inside the day center by Amirah Chatman — swirling chalk pastels of lakes and skies. Chatman’s art, like Smyth’s outside, was commissioned by the Regional Art and Culture Council.
“Everyone deserves art and beauty and a safe space,” Stegmann said. “That sends a message they are worthy of those things. Just by being born, you have the right to have all these beautiful things and services.”
It’s too easy for these values to get drowned out, particularly because of aggressive city rhetoric dehumanizing people with threats of bans.
So if you need reminding of these values, head downtown to find Smyth’s mural, and remember the thoughtful design of the services inside. Let that mural serve as a landmark for listening to people who have suffered from this lack of services and building from their designs.
The mural follows one person through scenes divided by a branched tree. In one, bluebirds eat from their lap, in another, they spread their arms wide beneath a wider-winged bird. Elsewhere they float among bubbles and fish toward a turtle, and they dig their bare feet into a knoll above a waterfall. Elk, mountains and other people — the mural shows a person thriving, simply.
“Come as you are.” That’s enough to be worthy of the services we have yet to realize.
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