2/6/2023
####################################
KGW - Portland
The Wall St Journal
The Center Square
####################################
KGW - Portland
The Sunderland RV Safe Park has the capacity to hold 55 vehicles. The city of Portland hasn't announced an official opening day yet.
PORTLAND, Ore. — Crews have finished work on Sunderland RV Safe Park, Portland's first outdoor shelter for people living in their RVs, city leaders announced on Friday.
The RV Safe Park is part of the city's short-term shelters program for homeless people, which is supposed to include six Safe Rest Villages.
The site is located on Northeast Sunderland Avenue, and the Portland Bureau of Transportation owns the property. It has the capacity to hold 55 vehicles. People living in the RVs will have access to case managers and on-site mental and behavioral health services.
The Salvation Army was selected to manage the Sunderland RV Safe Park.
"We are excited to have The Salvation Army join our program as shelter operators for the City’s first RV Safe Park and to start providing safe, legal places for those living in their RVs to park, access services, and begin their paths to housing or whatever is next,” said Commissioner Dan Ryan in a news release. "We are fortunate to have such an experienced partner join our team of shelter operators supporting the Safe Rest Village program.”
It's unclear exactly when the site will officially open. The Salvation Army still needs to finalize details with Multnomah County's Joint Office of Homeless Services before people can move in.
"We are pleased to continue to work closely with city leadership in an effort to ensure we are able to provide a safe, healthy and orderly Safe Park community that focuses on transitioning residents toward long-term housing and programs that guide individuals towards a hopeful future," said Major Bob Lloyd, The Salvation Army’s Portland metro coordinator.
The county's Joint Office of Homeless Services is working to develop additional Safe Park sites.
####################################
The Wall St Journal
Governors and legislators say proposed funding is needed to address youth well-being, homelessness and shootings
Dan FroschFeb. 5, 2023 at 12:00 pm ET
The budget proposals seek to address the nationwide scarcity of mental-health workers, the mental-health needs in schools and growing demand for emergency services. They represent a rare bipartisan point of agreement for more government action and underscore how dire many think the problem has become.
Governors in at least a dozen states—including California, South Carolina, Ohio and Georgia—are pushing for more money for mental health.
Advertisement - Scroll to Continue
“We have not seen a concerted effort like this before,” said Hannah Wesolowski, chief advocacy officer for the National Alliance on Mental Illness. Some state leaders are willing to spend more because they have budget surpluses to spend, she added, “while others are just willing to make the investment because it’s really reached a boiling point.”
Members of both parties say improved mental-health programs are part of the solution to problems including youth well-being and drug overdoses that worsened during the pandemic.
Many Republicans have also pointed to mental-health programs as the most effective way to reduce mass shootings, while some Democrats say bolstering such programs will help ease homelessness in their states.
According to the federal Health Resources and Services Administration, about 158.4 million Americans now live in areas with shortages of mental-health workers. A decade ago, 94.8 million people lived in such areas. The number of mental-health professionals needed to address the scarcity grew to 7,957 last year from 2,593 in 2013, data from the agency shows.
The shortage is the result of both a growing demand for services, which was already escalating before the pandemic, and a lack of mental-health professionals, due in part to high burnout and low pay, according to public-health officials and advocacy groups.
Calling the situation in Wisconsin a “quiet burgeoning crisis,” Democratic Gov. Tony Evers in his state of the state address last month proposed spending $500 million to bolster access to mental-health services. Under his proposal, new dollars would be spread across roughly three dozen programs that range from veterans’ programs to helping license new workers.
Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers proposed spending $500 million to improve access to mental-health care in the state.Photo: Morry Gash/Associated Press
Robin Vos, the Assembly speaker in Wisconsin’s Republican-led legislature, said that his party is concerned about youth mental health but wants to “come together to agree on preventive strategies and identification of root causes, like the damage that was done during the Covid lockdowns,” before spending more money.
As with other states, public-health officials in Wisconsin said they are especially worried about an increase in children suffering from mental-health troubles since the pandemic.
UW Health, the health system for the University of Wisconsin-Madison, reported that its pediatric emergency department saw more than 40 patients a month who required psychiatric care in 2022, up from about 15 a month in 2012.
“While the pandemic was this horrible, awful thing, one of the silver linings is that everyone is now realizing that we’ve neglected mental health for all these years,” said Mary Kay Battaglia, executive director of the Wisconsin chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
In Virginia, Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin has proposed spending more than $230 million to overhaul that state’s mental-health system, which he said was being overwhelmed. Among Mr. Youngkin’s priorities is $20 million to create 30 new mobile crisis teams that can respond to people who call the federal 988 hotline for suicide prevention.
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s proposed $230 million in spending would fund mobile suicide-prevention teams and more mental-health programs for schools.Photo: John C. Clark/Associated Press
Last summer, the federal government revamped its suicide hotline, switching to the new 988 number and adding $432 million to help expand capacity.
Mr. Youngkin’s proposal would also pump more dollars into treating youth, including $15 million to expand mental-health programs in schools.
His proposals have received bipartisan support in the state.
“While I support and applaud Gov. Youngkin’s push for mental-health funding, I want to make it clear that this proposal is the floor and not the ceiling in terms of where we need to go,” Democratic state Sen. Creigh Deeds said.
Democrats control Virginia’s senate, while Republicans have a majority in the state’s house.
It remains to be seen how many of the proposals for increased spending will be enacted. They are part of budgets for the next fiscal year, which in most states begins in July.
The proposals come as many states are dealing with increasing wait times for mental-health assistance, which can last weeks or even months at both community clinics and psychiatric hospitals.
New York Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul has proposed spending $1 billion on mental health over the next few years, including $18 million to open 150 inpatient beds at state psychiatric hospitals, as well as funding for 3,500 housing units for people with mental illness.
In Montana, Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte has called for $300 million in spending, which he said would be the biggest investment ever in the state’s behavioral-health system. That includes funding for repairs and improvements to the Montana State Hospital, in addition to some community-based services.
Mary Windecker, executive director Behavioral Health Alliance of Montana, which represents mental-health and substance-use disorder services, said she hoped an increase in Medicaid reimbursement rates also included in the Governor’s budget would draw much-needed mental-health workers.
Currently, more than half of all Montana children who require psychiatric residential treatment are being sent out of state, she said.
“We have lots of beds. There are lots of facilities,” she said. “There’s just nobody to staff them.”
Jimmy Vielkind contributed to this article.
Write to Dan Frosch at dan.frosch@wsj.com
####################################
The Center Square
This photo provided by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's Phoenix Division shows one of four containers holding some of the 30,000 fentanyl pills the agency seized in one of its bigger busts in Tempe, Arizona. The problem of fentanyl trafficking is nationwide, with Spokane County in Washington state one of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration's 11 focus areas for sales and use of the dangerous substance.
HOGP/AP Images
(The Center Square) – Spokane County Sheriffs served a search warrant early Wednesday morning leading to the arrest of four individuals tied to the alleged sale of fentanyl in the Spokane area.
Ryan Lovitt, 37, was arrested on two felony warrants. Brooke Benton, 29, and Sarah Langford, 39, were both arrested on misdemeanor warrants.
The fourth individual, Damian Plumley, 33, was arrested on a felony warrant for the sale and delivery of a “legend drug” under RCW 69.41.030.
Given his record Plumley, a 16-time convicted felon whose CV includes robbery in the first degree, theft of a firearm, residential burglary, and trafficking stolen property, could face significant jail time if convicted on three felony counts.
In addition to the arrest info above, the news release, issued by the Spokane County Sheriff's Office, states that other individuals related to the investigation were detained, identified, and released, though more arrests in the future have not been ruled out. The warrant was part of a greater ongoing investigation into the transportation and sale of the synthetic opioid fentanyl.
Because it is the second largest city in Washington state, and because of its location on I-90 and proximity to Canada, the DEA calls out Spokane as “a central hub for narcotics distributed throughout Eastern Washington and other States to the east to include Idaho and Montana” on its website, calling opioids and prescription drugs “among the top regional drug threats in Washington.”
Looking at the Washington State Department of Health data, the threat appears to be particularly acute in and around Spokane.
Fentanyl-related overdoses in Spokane County alone are up 186% between 2020 and 2021, nearly doubling, and 1233% between 2017 and 2021.
The DEA website Engage Spokane, devoted to tackling the Opioid epidemic in eastern Washington, also notes that “according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the number one killer of Americans aged 18 to 45 is fentanyl overdoses. The CDC estimates that over 104,000 people in the U.S. died from drug overdoses in the 12-month period ending on September 30, 2021. Sixty-five percent (65%) of those overdose deaths involved synthetic opioids such as fentanyl.”
All of this despite the fact that, according to the DEA, “from 2017 to 2021 the DEA Seattle Field Division increased its fentanyl seizures by 2,700% in Eastern Washington.”