Some Grants Pass councilors want unsheltered people to get sober before they get help, but waitlists limit access to treatment

After going to college in California, Skylar Fate wanted to return to her hometown, Grants Pass, Oregon. But when she was ready to make the move in 2023, Fate couldn’t find anywhere to live in the city.

“In a dual-income household with resources, it took us about a year to find a place to live,” Fate, community engagement manager for AllCare Health, told Streetlight in January. “We had resources, so I can only imagine how (the cost) affects people’s access (to housing).”

Like most American communities, Grants Pass has a tight housing market with high costs and low vacancy rates—a dynamic that crescendoed during the pandemic and propelled homelessness rates to record levels nationally.

Unlike most communities, though, Grants Pass has influenced how cities across the country deal with homelessness. Last year, the city prevailed in a landmark Supreme Court case on camping bans, leading to a wave of similar bans across the country.

But in a touch of irony, as part of a lawsuit alleging the city’s camping ban discriminates against people with disabilities, Grants Pass hasn’t been able to fully enforce its ban since February.

To convince a judge to remove a temporary injunction blocking the city from enforcing its ban in most places, the city must devote more resources to its campsites for unsheltered people.

Some Grants Pass councilors and residents who oppose spending tax dollars on the camps and other homeless services often say unsheltered people should get sober before they can get help.

Many people experiencing homelessness don’t camp in visible places and aren’t struggling with substance use issues. But aside from that, homeless service and substance use treatment providers say long waits for treatment beds fail to meet unsheltered people’s recovery needs, and the same affordable housing shortage that fuels homelessness also hinders facilities from recruiting staff and expanding services to serve more patients.

Views that government-funded services “enable” unsheltered people limit Grants Pass’ options to fight homelessness

Court records show removing the injunction hinges on the city increasing capacity and accessibility at its campsites for unsheltered people.

During an April meeting, councilors took a step toward meeting those benchmarks by voting 6 to 2 to expand one of the city’s campsites, a parking lot near city hall.

Councilor Indra Nicholas made one of the votes against expanding the campsite. Nicholas, who is part of a group of first-term councilors who scaled back city housing initiatives shortly after taking office in January, said that the council was enabling unsheltered people by choosing locations to allow camping. 

“When I campaigned, I talked about the city not enabling the homeless and not spending taxpayer dollars for the homeless, and that’s exactly what we’re doing,” Nicholas said during the meeting. “We are in a tough spot because if you do not designate sites and only say where they can’t be, they have to go (someplace) where they can be, but in my view, at least you’re making them work to find a place to sleep and not just giving them one. And you’re not enabling them.”

[ Read more: Boise, Idaho is staying focused on homeless services and affordable housing, rather than updating its camping ban ]

An Oregon law requires local camping bans be “objectively reasonable” to unsheltered people, and banning camping everywhere likely breaks that requirement. Under the state law, circuit courts have blocked at least one city, Portland, from enforcing a ban that wouldn’t have allowed camping on any public property during the day.

Waitlists prevent unsheltered people seeking substance use treatment from getting it

Grants Pass doesn’t have a low-barrier homeless shelter, a type of shelter that doesn’t require the people it serves to be sober, attend religious programs or follow other rules that might deter them from receiving services. The main shelter in Grants Pass, Gospel Rescue Mission, doesn’t serve people with disabilities or anyone who uses cigarettes, alcohol or other substances.

Some councilors and Grants Pass residents often argue the city doesn’t need a low-barrier shelter or additional shelter options, especially funded by taxpayer money. They say unsheltered people shouldn’t receive any assistance until they are sober and have a job—and even then, that assistance shouldn’t come from city coffers.

But many people experiencing homelessness don’t have a substance use disorder, already have a job or can’t work because of a disability, according to data and conversations with unsheltered people, homeless service providers and health care workers. 

Treatment isn’t so easy to come by. Last year, nonprofit Mental Health America ranked Oregon 47^th for access to substance use treatment and mental health care. The state also has a workforce shortage in behavioral health services.

[ Read more: Grants Pass, Oregon spends more from federal development grants on administrative costs than homeless services ]

Sommer Wolcott is executive director of OnTrack Rogue Valley, which provides substance use disorder treatment in Grants Pass, Medford and Cave Junction. During a Grants Pass City Council forum in February, Wolcott said OnTrack had a waitlist of about 330 people for 47 residential treatment beds, which can be a barrier to unsheltered people getting treatment.

“A lot of times, by the time there’s a bed available, we can’t find them because they’re unhoused,” she said. “Maybe they had a burner phone. We just can’t find them.”

Cassy Leach, executive director of the nonprofit Mobile Integrative Navigation Team (MINT), said during the forum that if the city had more treatment beds, “this problem would look very different, very fast.”

“We have these people who are ready, who are desperate,” she said. “They want to go to treatment, but there’s no bed, and we’ve got to keep them engaged until there is a bed.”

Tony Mendenhall is the transitional living program manager for Hearts with a Mission, a nonprofit that serves youth, older adults and families in Medford and Grants Pass. With his wife, Stephanie, Mendenhall also co-founded Medford’s Recovery Café, which uses a peer-mentoring model to support people in recovery. 

“You’re going to lose them if you don’t get them in when they’re ready,” Tony said during the forum. “They’re surrounded by drugs, addiction and all sorts of stuff.”

Grants Pass’ affordable housing shortage gets in the way of treatment options and workforce recruitment

Shelly Uhrig is executive director of Options for Southern Oregon, which provides mental health and addiction treatment services in Josephine and Jackson counties. During the forum in February, Uhrig said she disagreed with the notion that Grants Pass doesn’t need more shelter options, citing a gap for people receiving out-patient treatment.

“When you have somebody that’s trying to get treatment and you don’t have any place to have them sheltered, it’s really hard to stay on your meds,” she said. “It’s really hard to keep in-services, have a job and do all the things that are needed.”

[ Read more: Grants Pass’ new mayor and councilors scaled back housing efforts as most residents can’t afford rent ]

Wolcott said pre-treatment and peer support can help connect unsheltered people with Medicaid benefits, medications and other resources and are better options because their basic needs have to be met before they can participate in more intensive services. 

She said: “It can be really challenging to try to get an individual to stop using to participate in once-a-week outpatient counseling sessions or something like that while they’re struggling to survive, they have all their belongings with them, they don’t know where to go and they can’t get their medications refilled or they lost them the last time they moved.”

The solution to waitlists might seem to be just adding more treatment beds, but there’s a catch: the housing shortage, again. At the city forum, Uhrig said it comes down to recruitment.

“You can’t find the staff, nor can we recruit them in, because of the lack of affordable housing,” she said. “So it’s this one big circle, and it’s hard to get off the wheel that we’ve created just by the fact the inventory’s low.”

Fate and Josh Balloch, vice president of health policy and communications for AllCare Health, said the lack of workforce housing leads to a shortage of providers because of the difficulty to recruit and retain staff.

In January, Balloch told Streetlight: “We have literally spent hundreds of thousands of dollars getting people to say, ‘Yes, we’re going to move here, we’re bringing our family, we’re coming here. This is a beautiful part of the world,’ only to find that they can’t find housing and then relocate to a different area. That happens on a routine basis for AllCare, our hospital and our clinics.”

Living outdoors makes it harder to stay healthy

Complicating matters, housing instability affects a person’s health “all the way across the board,” Fate said.

“If someone is continuously worried about paying their rent or where they’re going to sleep next, they’re not going to see their doctor for diabetes care, heart issues or lymphedema, and they’re going to be high ER utilizers, as well,” she said. “They might not establish with a primary care provider and just be in the ER.”

[ Read more: Budgets for Grants Pass’ new campsite program show unexplained, runaway costs ]

Streetlight spoke to Mary Elizabeth Donnelly, president of the social services conference for St. Vincent de Paul in Grants Pass, in early February, when a brutal winter storm brought freezing temperatures, snow and ice to the city. Until spring arrived, MINT ran an overnight warming shelter on nights with below-freezing temperatures, but Donnelly worried where unsheltered residents would go during the day.

Severe weather can take a toll on the health of people who live outdoors. Donnelly recalled heavy rains that hit people staying at the former J Street campsite during November and December last year.

“They were sleeping in the mud,” she said. “Since it’s a flat area, the water had nowhere to go, so they were soaked. Everything was soaked, all of their things. … They were all sick after the rains and sleeping in those kinds of conditions.”

During the forum in February, councilors—who weeks earlier had shut down a housing advisory committee and canceled grants to MINT that would have supported the city’s first low-barrier shelter—asked the panel about potential long-term solutions.

“When there are opportunities to approve or not approve of projects, you can have a huge impact,” Wolcott said. “If we find funding to open more transitional houses and we have to bring the project here, you know that half of the room is going to be in support and half the room is not, but we have to add more recovery housing, Oxford housing and things like Recovery Café.”

She added: “There has to be this continuum of services and affordable housing so that when people are coming out of treatment, they can get into affordable housing and so that we can attract a workforce and prevent more people from becoming unhoused because they can no longer afford their housing.”

Contact Streetlight editor Mollie Bryant at 405-990-0988 or bryant@streetlightnews.org. Follow her reporting on Bluesky or by joining our newsletter.

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