Public comments ask city not to lose CAHOOTS, too

Presenter: Public comments April 14 asked the City Council to provide leadership to get the CAHOOTS van back on the streets of Eugene. Laurel Lisovskis:

Laurel Lisovskis: Hello, my name is Laurel Lisovskis, a CAHOOTS worker of 10 years. Last week, CAHOOTS saw almost 80% of its staff laid off by White Bird. And I stand here now in the wake of an ended contract and a perfect storm of complicated funding issues that have effectively erased us from working in Eugene.

[00:00:29] But we’ve been on this road together for 35 years. A CAHOOTS community survey recently conducted by Portland State University masters in social work candidate Elise Colehour report that 78% of fire and police in both cities agree that CAHOOTS benefits their departments and 98% of our stakeholders including community members agree that CAHOOTS is an essential part of public safety.

[00:00:54] Nationally we’ve become a part of the public safety ecosystem that provides nonforce responses that reduce violence and harm and center people’s agency, which empowers all of us and leads to effective outcomes.

[00:01:06] We are the least expensive public safety response that dispatch can deploy in the field. We save money every time we resolve someone’s needs without taking them to the hospital, and every time an officer or a paramedic and all of their equipment doesn’t have to respond to a call.

[00:01:22] We improve public spaces by supporting connections to shelter and safety. We save lives and dignity every time we prevent someone from having to go to the hospital in handcuffs. We take care of welfare checks, public assists, and many other aspects of our safety landscape that can’t be compartmentalized into strictly behavioral health.

[00:01:39] Also, as we all know, behavioral health exists in combination with things like substance dependence and medical issues, and shouldn’t be seen as separate. Health care is integrated.

[00:01:49] But the county crisis team, the other service available, has a lot of exclusionary criterion and only respond to behavioral health and do not respond to calls that are combined with a medical issue or a substance dependency issue or any other complicating factor.

[00:02:03] In 2027, the Citizens Advisory Board for the Community Safety Initiative will be measuring things like response times for officers to get to nonemergency calls. And though CAHOOTS does not receive funds from the payroll tax, if you use April 7 as a data point, you’re going to see the impact of this loss.

[00:02:20] To the CAHOOTS workers, our relevance and validity is a no-brainer. We want to be your cushion of support. The data reflects that we deserve to be here, and we cost less than the other arms of public safety.

[00:02:31] Presenter: Allison Knight:

[00:02:32] Allison Knight: My name is Allison Knight, the lead mental health attorney at the Public Defender Services of Lane County. I’m speaking to you today gravely concerned about the loss of CAHOOTS and the impact it will have on my clients and our community.

[00:02:45] I’m sure you are all aware about the increase in mental health needs following the pandemic in our community. That increase was happening long before COVID and has been made dramatically worse over the last few years.

[00:02:56] This crisis came about because of decades of underinvestment in community mental health resources. The criminal justice system is now the de facto mental health treatment provider for many people with serious mental illness. Our state hospital is now primarily used to restore people to competency for criminal cases. And for years, the most reliable way to access the highest level of psychiatric care was to be charged with a crime.

[00:03:20] The surge in patients for competency restoration over the last few years has led to federal litigation, and a court order meant to reduce the number of patients who qualify for admission. This means that there are very seriously mentally ill people, even those who have been charged with a crime, who normally or who for the last few years have been able to access the state hospital through the jails, are no longer able to do that.

[00:03:42] Even despite that, Lane County sends more people to the state hospital every month than any other county in Oregon besides Multnomah. This is not surprising, given our community treatment resources have been dwindling.

[00:03:54] Since December of 2023, Eugene lost the University District hospital and the Hourglass Crisis Center, and as of last week, CAHOOTS. These were no-barrier treatment access points for our most vulnerable neighbors to receive care when experiencing a mental health crisis.

[00:04:09] Each of these losses increases the likelihood that a person with serious mental illness will have a law enforcement response resulting in use of force or incarceration. You might be thinking that that has nothing to do with you because that’s a county problem or a state issue, but it’s clear that eroding the community treatment infrastructure simply leads to downstream consequences with our most vulnerable neighbors bearing the brunt.

[00:04:31] We are not in a place with this crisis where we can say one service can be absorbed by another. Mobile crisis is not a one-to-one substitute for CAHOOTS. And even if it were, the scale of this problem is not such that we can be downsizing resources. We need more of every kind of community treatment resource.

[00:04:48] Presenter: Tracy Tessler:

[00:04:50] Tracy Tessler: Hello, I’m Tracy Tessler. I’m here as a community member. I’m also here as a member of TIP, Trauma Intervention Program of Lane County, a volunteer-run organization. We often respond with CAHOOTS.

[00:05:03] We have made it a great effort to be in communication with CAHOOTS and have a really respectful relationship with them, and I think that we’ve been really successful with that.

[00:05:14] I’ve been on calls with CAHOOTS present and I have no delusion that we are replacing CAHOOTS, not even a bit. We have our role, we’re there to support people in a traumatic event for a short period of time.

[00:05:29] CAHOOTS is full on throwing themselves into the situation and they are not in a hurry to run off and get on to their next gig or check it off the list. They are there with that person and they are committed to them in that moment, and they make a difference. And I feel safe on calls with them as a team lead for my organization, and I have my responders out there.

[00:05:57] When they’re with CAHOOTS, I know that they have each other’s backs. CAHOOTS has a unique skill set. They have both the EMS and incredible amount of mental health training. They are experts at what they do. And it makes no sense that we are losing this program. It’s a priority in this. I’ve seen it in action.

[00:06:21] I’d also like to speak to my experience with Egan Warming Centers. So I volunteer usually at the youth site, sometimes at other ones. I’ve seen CAHOOTS in action there. They save lives. People, so, people are at risk without CAHOOTS to transport them in, to talk them down, to deal with these crises. We have, in Egan, we have people who are the mental health lead for the night. They’re not CAHOOTS. CAHOOTS is a very unique program that has taken decades to develop and train these people.

[00:06:58] Presenter: Mellinda Poor:

[00:07:00] Mellinda Poor: Hi, My name is Mellinda Poor. I work at Community Supported Shelters as a service navigation manager, and I am here tonight to express my concern for the safety of my community members in the abrupt and unexpected decision to discontinue services for CAHOOTS.

[00:07:19] In this line of work, of working with the most marginalized and traumatized people in our community, trust is an essential part of being able to deliver services. My coworkers and I, we respond to crisis situations very frequently. And in those situations, we are often met with folks who are in crisis but are unwilling to accept services outside of CAHOOTS because they are a trusted resource in our community. And I think that that is extremely important to consider.

[00:07:57] I understand that the (Lane County) Mobile Crisis Services are there but they do not replace the rapport that has been established with this community. And I think that by discontinuing those services, people are very much put at risk.

[00:08:16] Presenter: Eli Simon:

[00:08:17] Eli Simon: Hello, my name is Eli, and I work for a nonprofit organization with some programs specializing in housing for people who have nowhere else to go. One of these programs that I work for is a crisis youth shelter, and while I’m not speaking on the group’s behalf, I would like to say that the community, I’ve worked for them for a couple of years, and one of the things that we have guests fill out when they come there is something called the Columbia Suicide Severity Rating Scale.

[00:08:47] And when guests score highly enough on that, that we cannot ensure their safety, we call CAHOOTS when our guests need some way to keep themselves safe and need someone to talk to, speaking to CAHOOTS is often a way that they say that would help them.

[00:09:04] When people come to the door and ask for assistance, and we can’t provide that, CAHOOTS is, where some situations occur and don’t require immediate EMS attention but can’t go unaddressed. We call CAHOOTS. Our staff has learned a lot from CAHOOTS and our guests have developed a good rapport with them over this time.

[00:09:27] MCS-LC, one of the organizations that’s supposed to take their place, does not serve people under the age of 18. They don’t serve people who are intoxicated. CAHOOTS, as is an invaluable part of this community, and the wherewithal of their workers cannot be overstated, and the people need to know how much they mean for the community.

[00:09:47] There are so many people who want to be here today that there aren’t even enough chairs, not only in this room, there aren’t enough chairs outside of this room to have everyone be seated.

[00:09:55] On a more personal note. I’ve never been to a city council meeting before. I haven’t attended that many protests before in my life. This is a cause that I really feel strongly about and want to have my voice heard about. And I stand with CAHOOTS and the work they do.

[00:10:11] Presenter: Ariel Myler:

[00:10:12] Ariel Myler: Hi, my name is Ariel Myler and I am sitting in as a community member. But I also work in a residential treatment program managing a facility for individuals with mental illness. We use CAHOOTS every single day with our clients because our clients require services that CAHOOTS provides that the Eugene police enforcement cannot.

[00:10:37] Our clients do not need armed people who cannot speak to them when they are experiencing a crisis and we need the support from CAHOOTS. They have gained rapport with most of our clients and we rely on their services to keep our community going and to help clients that are experiencing a mental health crisis.

[00:11:01] Abolishing this service or at least extinguishing it to one day a week is asking clients to only experience a mental health crisis one day a week which is just not realistic.

[00:11:14] I urge you to continue to find resources necessary to keep CAHOOTS running for more than one day a week for the community and people experiencing mental health crises. Thank you.

[00:11:25] Presenter: Dustin Stauth:

[00:11:27] Dustin Stauth: My name’s Dustin Stauth, speaking on behalf of myself, but I have worked with homeless organizations in town for about five years, and use CAHOOTS, continue to use CAHOOTS. It’s on a regular basis for suicide risk assessments, as well as check-ins for people who are found on the street, and no one’s around to help them.

[00:11:47] They’re essential, their level of skill and sensitivity in their communication, their crisis counseling is unmatched potentially in the country.

[00:11:59] Whitebird has been developing crisis counseling that is responsive to human beings and meeting them where they’re at for decades and that institutional knowledge is being lost. You can’t replace it.

[00:12:14] It’s tragic that people who have been passing down this knowledge and these skills for decades are now being cut off and I can only hope that whatever service replaces CAHOOTS, if that is what is happening, we’ll look to these people for the wisdom that they have been carrying for decades in this community.

[00:12:41] And it’s very upsetting that this Lane County crisis service has been developing and expanding right as CAHOOTS is crumbling and that is disturbing. The level of funding that is going to Lane County Service could have and should have been going to CAHOOTS. 

[00:13:01] Presenter: Stacy Bierma Welch:

[00:13:03] Stacy Bierma Welch: Hi, my name is Stacy Bierma Welch. I’m here in support of CAHOOTS. I have a family member who’s neurodivergent and schizoaffective and we’ve used CAHOOTS many times.

And he’s been most successful with that kind of advocacy at the hospital or, you know, just walking in the last time he went, he went on his own and tried to get into the behavioral health unit and they wouldn’t take him there. They wouldn’t send him there. They said he didn’t qualify without having that kind of advocacy, so I wanted to root for him.

[00:13:36] I also was a volunteer at White Bird Front Rooms and at Egan and I’m a current volunteer at RAVEN (Radical Assistance for Vulnerable Eugene Neighbors). We’re doing services downtown behind the church, and we have a lot, I have a lot of direct experience with CAHOOTS, and it’s a tragedy to not have that.

[00:13:54] It’s rough out there on the streets for people, and, you know, we’re putting, we’re putting Band-Aids on broken bones, you know, there’s just not enough resources for everybody. So having that, knowing that that resource is there, even if it’s going to get a sandwich or whatever, whatever minimal resources that we have, it really helps stabilize people.

And knowing that they can call CAHOOTS when they need it, I really think it’s crucial to keeping people from dying and keeping them but as level-headed as they can be in the situation that they’re in.

[00:14:31] But I also think it saves the money for the police and I think the library is really important. You know, it’s, a lot of people spend a lot of time at the library because it’s the only place they can get out of the weather now and hope that we can all work together and keep providing these services to get people stable and get them off the streets.

[00:14:56] Presenter: Alex York:

[00:14:57] Alex York: My name is Alex York. I work at the downtown Eugene Public Library. I’m speaking on behalf of myself and not of the city. I directly serve the people in our community who need the resources that CAHOOTS provides.

[00:15:11] On a daily basis, we have adults experiencing mental health crisis, minor but impactful medical needs, and other care that is irreplaceable from professionals who are not police or the fire department.

[00:15:25] Although those of us at the library care immensely, we lack the proper training and resources to give our vulnerable community the care that it needs while also providing a myriad of other library services. As library staff, we have leaned heavily on CAHOOTS for our own safety while dealing with escalated mental health situations, sometimes multiple times a day.

[00:15:49] CAHOOTS has a rapport and expertise that filled many gaps that the city has in providing housing, harm reduction, and mental health care to our community members that would provide at least immediate relief and also create a path for longer-term care.

[00:16:05] Relying on Lane County’s mobile crisis unit or police-based counselors who work for the city hasn’t had the same impact with our patrons as CAHOOTS does. More than once I observed patrons having mental health crisis and situations and being immediately de-escalated just by the presence of CAHOOTS because of the rapport that they’ve built.

[00:16:28] And they’ve worked so hard to build a relationship with people that are used to being so resented for lack of resources by police and by fire and EMS. And they also lack the resources to truly help a lot of these people.

[00:16:45] CAHOOTS should be 100% funded by the city and the city of Eugene and the community wanted to prioritize the service in 2021 when deciding the CSI funding, and now we need it more than ever.

[00:16:59] Presenter: Tizoc Arenas:

[00:17:01] Tizoc Arenas: My name is Tizoc Arenas and I’m an officer and member of Teamsters Local 223, and on the board of the Eugene Springfield Solidarity Network. And I’m here standing in solidarity with our CAHOOTS Teamsters Local 206 family tonight.

[00:17:14] I have to say that I think it’s terrible what our community is going to lose because of what’s happening to CAHOOTS workers because of the layoffs by White Bird. It is shameful that the community is losing such vital services. And I’m not just here saying this as a Teamster tonight in support of my fellow Teamsters, but I’m also saying this as a community member who votes in this community and cares about the well-being of its citizens.

[00:17:37] I recall some of my own neighbors being cared for by CAHOOTS workers, and that makes me proud that my union family is doing the kind of work that saves lives every day.

[00:17:46] I hope whatever comes next is to the benefit of these workers in the community because the program and these workers provide something that not everybody can provide.

[00:17:54] Their commitment to this work is astounding, and I hope this board makes the right choice, whatever that may be, whenever that may be, moving forward to support these workers in this community.

[00:18:04] Presenter: Chris Rompala:

[00:18:06] Chris Rompala: My name is Chris Rompala. First of all, I’m a nurse at RiverBend. I want to make it very clear that I’m not speaking on behalf of my employer. I’m here on behalf of the Oregon Nurses Association and as many of us in this room know, CAHOOTS is a critical part of public health and safety in Eugene.

[00:18:23] For more than 35 years, CAHOOTS has served as an alternative nonpolice crisis response for people experiencing mental health emergencies, substance use issues, and homelessness. This program is nationally respected and has been modeled by other cities across the nation, has a compassionate, trauma-informed response that saves lives and keeps people out of jails and our emergency rooms.

[00:18:47] In 2024 alone, CAHOOTS responded in nearly 17,000 calls with an average of 46 calls per day. This is not a fringe service. It’s a core to a public safety in Eugene. This abrupt closure leaves a massive hole in our community’s crisis response. Eugene now lacks a reliable nonpolice option for responding to people in mental health crises. Emergency departments like ours at RiverBend are already overburdened and will see more people arriving in acute crisis because they have nowhere else to turn.

[00:19:22] Other services like mobile crisis don’t offer transportation or housing navigation and there is no true replacement for what CAHOOTS offered.

[00:19:32] The city must act now to restore or replace these services. Eugene should immediately explore emergency bridge funding to reinstate CAHOOTS services even on a limited basis.

[00:19:45] As a nurse, I see firsthand how vulnerable people fall through the cracks where there is no one there to catch them. 

[00:19:56] I and the over 1,500 nurses I represent at RiverBend and over 23,000 members of the Oregon Nurses Association urge the City Council to act quickly transparently and with urgency.

[00:20:10] Presenter: Mark Peabody:

[00:20:16] Mark Peabody: Hi, I’m Mark Peabody. I want to start by saying cardiologists, OB-GYNs, brain surgeons, neurologists, what do they all have in common?

[00:20:24] We all know they’re doctors, but they’re also specialists. And the field of medicine is very, very complex. I am an EMT-Intermediate. And as such, I am a generalist practitioner. As an EMT, I work with several of the CAHOOTS responders, one of them is in this room. They are outstanding. But beyond that, they are specialists trained to work with a specific group of at-risk people.

[00:20:56] The one biggest fear you have as a medical practitioner is that you’re going to get it wrong. You’re going to assess the patient incorrectly because you don’t have that specific knowledge. And it’s frightening when you get in that situation. I’ve watched these guys and they have that kind of training and it can’t be replaced.

[00:21:21] I was working downtown in December. It was a cold winter night and you could see your breath. And I was coming home. I was by the library downtown and I saw a man in a wheelchair across the street from where I was parked. And being an EMT and wanting to help, I went over and said, ‘Hey, what’s wrong?’

[00:21:44] First thing I noticed was he had this little lap robe that was lying in the street in the rain. He had a water bottle that was knocked over. He was incapable of reaching for the bottle.

[00:21:56] I asked him, ‘How can I help you?’

[00:21:58] And he said, ‘Can you please call CAHOOTS?’ And he said, ‘Can you stay with me? I’m really, really scared. I have no place to go tonight.’

[00:22:08] And I could smell urine on him. It smelled like he had a UTI, urinary tract infection. He was in bad, bad shape. So I waited with him for about 20 minutes. And CAHOOTS came up. They jumped right out of their van and they said, ‘Hey John, how are you doing?’ They knew him. They knew his condition. They were familiar with him. That’s priceless.

[00:22:38] Presenter: Brittany Farro:

[00:22:39] Brittany Farro: Hi, I’m Brittany Farro, and I’m not speaking on behalf of former current employers, but I’ve been a physician assistant in this community providing neurological care for the past 11 years. And I am urging you to quickly reinstate funding for CAHOOTS. I’ve used their services over this time frame and CAHOOTS, specifically, not another service that can fill their void, as you’ve heard.

[00:22:39] I’ve used their services due to their legacy of safe and compassionate care. They truly help to offload services for the police officers. They certainly help triage patients through our hospital system effectively so that the people who need to be there get the help that they need and that the people who don’t need to come in through the emergency room don’t overburden a continually overcapacity system that we have right now in our hospitals.

[00:23:33] As an outpatient provider I have called CAHOOTS many times for patients calling my clinic feeling suicidal or having acute mental health crises. Mental health crises come hand in hand with neurological disorders and I can’t do my job without the services of CAHOOTS.

[00:23:46] I supply their information to help my patients, family members help to take care of them at home. When they ask me what can I do for this condition, I have to give them resources, and without CAHOOTS, I don’t have appropriate resources I need that can actually match the situation and provide appropriate intervention.

[00:24:01] Additionally, I work in a hospital setting now and I manage patients who have attempted or completed suicide and I can tell you right now that in the cascade of suicidal ideation there’s an impulsivity period where we are able to have CAHOOTS come in and intervene, and if they can intervene in that impulsive situation, they can save lives.

[00:24:22] And I am very very frightened to see what’s going to happen without them in our community and what that’s going to look like for our hospital system.

[00:24:28] Presenter: Travis Johannes:

[00:24:30] Travis Johannes: Hello, I’m Travis Johannes. I’m here as a community member. I do also work in social services, where I interact with a lot of people who spend a lot of time working with CAHOOTS.

[00:24:43] One thing that really stands out to me is the absolute trust that people have in CAHOOTS. They will come to our site, they don’t need, they aren’t even part of our program, but they know if they come, they ask for CAHOOTS. They don’t ask for the police, they don’t ask for anyone else. A lot of those people right now probably don’t even know CAHOOTS isn’t available anymore. they are going to have a crisis tomorrow and reach out for Coots and realize that they are S-O-L.

[00:25:16] I think it’s, I think Councilor Groves, you said I believe $2 million for CAHOOTS. How much for police? How much for curbside curbside parking enforcement? A document online that I found said $9,173,000 for police. I believe it was $3 million for Microsoft 365.

Like, if we cannot find enough money to fully fund CAHOOTS like we fully fund police and we pretend to call them a pillar of our public safety, I don’t know, I just, I hope you all aren’t the mayor and city council that lets CAHOOTS die, because that would not be a great legacy.

[00:25:56] Presenter: The city leaders who lost the University District hospital, primary care physicians, and the Hourglass Crisis Center, are asked not to lose CAHOOTS.

That’s Part 1 of our coverage of public comments supporting CAHOOTS at the City Council April 14. Part 2 features community allies.

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This story produced by John Q. Murray and supported through the Whole Community Time Bank by generous listeners of KEPW 97.3, Eugene’s PeaceWorks Community Radio.