A major but familiar dust up in the Ardenwald-Johnson neighborhood is changing course this week. Encouraged by residents, the Milwaukie City Council tried to block a plan to turn a residential home into a secure treatment facility called Balfour House – stocked with cameras, alarms and 24-hour staffing – for 15 people who had been found guilty except for insanity to transition back into noninstitutional life. This Tuesday, the Council finally voted to stop subverting the plan and the Ardenwald-Johnson Creek Neighborhood Association launched a website outlining why they think Balfour House could threaten their safety.
I’m going to go ahead and cry NIMBY on this right now. But this debate is really interesting because it brings up the deep fear of the mentally ill a lot of people feel. I get what makes people queasy about living next door to mentally ill people who’ve committed violent crimes. But I also think making more centers like Balfour House are the right thing to do.
Okay, first from the neighbor’s website:
“Many of us believe that a secure lockdown facility of 15 or more people, some of whom will have committed violent acts (murder, rape, sexual and child molestation, arson, etc.), does not belong within an area of single family homes. It is not a matter of discrimination. Whether the residents come from the state maximum security prison or from the state mental hospital, it is not appropriate.”
“I would like to see the mentally ill get some treatment, but if they escaped, they could potentially commit harm,” Neighborhood Association Secretary Bryan Dorr told me yesterday, “Right now this community is concerned about its safety and well being.”
The company that runs these secure group homes says hostility from neighbors is typical, but unfounded. “Once the facility is sited, we do not get complaints from neighbors,” says Jones. And their record is clean. A Columbia Care treatment center that’s been in Josephine County for 14 years recently got a letter from the sheriff certifying its incident-free record. In the mean time, they’ve been providing mental healthcare for people who really need it.
“It’s sort of a dance that the state and agencies do but the law is really clear,” exaplains Jason Renaud, an advocate for the Mental Health Association of Portland who’s been working with disabled people for more than 15 years, “People with mental illness are disabled people.” Discriminating against where mentally disabled people can live breaks both the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Federal Housing Act.
Dorr says allowing mentally ill criminals to live in secure residential facilities is a “loophole” in the law, that the ADA and Federal Housing Act should make an exception and allow the government to bar certain mentally ill people from living in certain neighborhoods.
The basic problem here is that people who commit crimes can’t just disappear. We really really want them to as a society, putting more and more people behind bars for longer and longer sentences. But the point of arresting people for crimes is the hope (except in some exceptionally awful cases) that they can someday learn how to function in society again. People don’t want “the criminally insane” transitioning back into society via their neighborhood, but think of the bleak options for what would happen if local governments and irate neighbors were allowed to kick mentally ill people out of areas near schools or children:
1. Mental patients would go straight from living closely supervised in the state mental hospital to living on their own with no income or housing. That means many of them would wind up homeless. No staff, no medication, no control. Not good for the children.
2. Mentally ill people would become ghettoized. As Jason Renaud points out, that doesn’t help them get better: “When they continue to be discriminated against and ostracized, it’s hard to get well.” But it’s also bad for local communities, as Iowa found after passing a super-restrictive law on where sex offenders could live. Iowa wound up with all of its sex offenders living in the handful of still-legal neighborhoods (like renting out entire motels to share). Not good for the children!
Elaine Medcalf gets it – she’s the Vice Chair of the Powellhurst Neighborhood Assocation as also happens to be a social worker. “People can change,” Medcalf says simply, adding, “Where are they going to put them if they don’t put [the residential facility] there? We can’t put them all downtown!” A residential treatment facility similar to the planned Balfour House already exists in Powellhurst, Faulkner Place on SE 134th and Powell. Medcalf says she hasn’t heard of any problems at all resulting from Faulkner Place since it was built.
Update: One of the issues the neighbors are upset about is that if someone wanders off from the facility, the staff legally can’t restrain them – they just have to call the police. I wondered whether this was a legit concern, so I asked the police to look through their reports from Faulkner Place. Since January 2006, they’ve been called for 19 walk-offs. All those people were found and no one got hurt but the neighbors are right: there’s the chance that 10 mentally ill people a year could be wandering around their streets.
I love how people are worried about ‘dangerous mentally ill’ people in such a way to say ‘not in my backyard!’ but do not offer or even attempt to come up with some kind of alternative. All they care about is ‘their people’ not anyone elses. These people have to go somewhere, but everyone is so selfish to think anywhere but ‘here’ is best.
I’m fine with the new house locating in my neighborhood in NoPo. Come on up! We have plenty of room for everyone. We are up and coming, a great place for new beginnings.
Hello, I am a member of the Ardenwald/Johnson Creek Neighborhood Association, the neighborhood slated for the secure residential treatment facility discussed in this blog. I wish to point out that some of the information in your blog is not correct. Sarah, sorry I didn’t get a chance to call you back before you posted this information.
You talk about a plan to turn a “residential home” into a secure treatment facility, but that is not the intent. Columbia Care plans to demolish the existing home and build an 8,500 square foot facility with a 24 car parking lot at the front of the property. This area is zoned R7 and is meant for single family dwellings. This facility will be more than four times the size of the surrounding homes! Loopholes in the FHA and ADA are being used to force a large facility into an area it simply does not belong.
Also, your characterization of the neighborhood actions as NIMBY is also inaccurate. Milwaukie residents would not be objecting so strenuously if the mentally ill patients were truly ready to reintegrate into society. These are not patients who will be holding day jobs and returning to a safe place at night. These violent occupants will be institutionalized for up to three years, making the nature of this facility different from other transitional homes. This facility amounts to little more than a residential prison for forensic patients who have committed some very heinous crimes, but without the security measures implemented at real prisons. Local residents will not even be notified of their new neighbor’s transgressions due to their “disabled” status.
Do a quick search on the web and you’ll have no problem finding news articles about the mentally ill escaping from treatment facilities or statements concerning some of the crimes they previously committed. Due to the nature of these crimes we feel facilities such as these pose a very real threat and do not belong in any backyard. It appears this will be the preferred paradigm to address the problems at the Oregon State Hospital, so please keep your eyes open as your neighborhood may very well be next. THIS IS SIMPLY THE WRONG SOLUTION! Our government officials need to step up and find an answer that truly serves all parties. This solution should include neighborhoods, cities, counties, and state officials working together to find the answer to help everyone involved and the communities they live in.
Yes, they are technically mentally ill. Foes of these homes might consider the following:
1) these are very well medicated individuals. medication which appears designed to slow the brain and body. thus making violent incidences rare.
2) it costs $15,000 a month for the average court committed person to be held in the Oregon State Hospital. Not sure on the $ amount for the forensic, criminally committed persons. This money is coming from yours and my paycheck. Without having any data on hand, a conservative guess for housing someone in a community placement runs well less than $1,000. Plus, the federal gov with deeper pockets picks up a large portion of group homes clients costs for medication, food and housing.
3) You don’t want under trained, underpaid and overworked people restraining residents of group homes. The police, in most instances, bring more training, bodies and overall safety when they respond to run offs.
4) Indeed our prisons and other locked institutions are in place to get people to be calmer, safer members of society. Not somewhere to call home for extended periods when deemed unnecessary.
BTW – Excellent work Sarah! I’m impressed with your having mentioned all viewpoints and concerns from both sides. Again, great stuff.
I would like to see more on this topic in particular because I am seeing more people who have proven to be harmless, sitting for months or even years, inside the Oregon State Hospital – an institution. Creating more reliance from mentally ill persons to come back ‘home’ in the institution. Not good.
Sarah,
You seem at last to have picked up the Mercury’s integrity regarding news stories. Have you been taking journalism lessons from Matt Davis?
“I’m going to go ahead and cry NIMBY on this right now”: Wow, thanks for saving us some time. It’s good to know a “reporter’s” biases right up front. I know, this page is called “blogtown,” not “newstown,” but your credibility as a reporter depends on your objectivity, even on a blog. Ever notice how many sources won’t return Matt’s calls?
“I get what makes people queasy about living next door to mentally ill people who’ve committed violent crimes”: No, I don’t think you do. It’s easy to say “I get” something. It’s another thing to live half a block from a building full of people who have committed murder, rape, arson, God knows what. Try it some time.
“A Columbia Care treatment center that’s been in Josephine County for 14 years recently got a letter from the sheriff certifying its incident-free record”: And yet, in your “update,” you acknowledge that walk-offs are not an uncommon occurrence. Ten walk-offs a year (wherever you got THAT figure) from a 15-bed facility full of violent people — whether they are “mentally disabled” or not — is something to think about.
The issue is complex, and it deserves more than the 20 minutes’ worth of research you gave it.
Uhggg, I’d rather the mental hospital collect the walk offs than the police. The police will just shoot them, (they can’t even collect a 3 foot alligator without thinking that shooting it is the best solution,) but the mental hospital personal have the training to deal with their customers.
This is not a surprise to me at all. Anyway, a few comments about the blog post:
“I would like to see the mentally ill get some treatment, but if they escaped, they could potentially commit harm.”
By “they” in the quote, that is the criminally insane population of the facility.
“ADA and Federal Housing Act should make an exception and allow the government to bar certain mentally ill people from living in certain neighborhoods.”
Nope. It should be read as “ADA and Federal Housing Act should make an exception and allow the government to bar criminally insane people who should be in jail from living in neighborhoods.”
On one other note, I am also deeply concerned about the safety of the non-criminal mentally ill residents residing with the high-risk criminally insane population in the facility.
I would love the non-criminal mentally ill to have rehabilitation and to live a better life, but the criminally insane population may not help and benefit for both the mentally ill population and to the community.
katieinNoPo, Columbia Care is always looking for new sites as they plan on implementing these facilities all over the State. Please contact them at 541-858-8170 or e-mail bbeckett@columbiacare.org if you are really serious and not just crying NIMBY from your safe distance.
I believe that we need more facilities like these. Treat the disease not the symptoms. A large number of offenders have mental health issues that need to be dealt with before they are put into a condition to be willing to learn that there are better ways and better days.