Oregon Integrated Homelessness,
Behavioral Health & Recovery Act
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Residential mental-health treatment
Substance-use disorder treatment
Withdrawal management and stabilization
Secure and intensive treatment when legally appropriate
Step-down and transitional recovery facilities
Supportive recovery housing
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The Act would establish a coordinated continuum:
Outreach → Stabilization → Treatment → Recovery → Transitional Housing → Permanent Housing
Housing remains essential, but housing alone cannot treat untreated psychosis, severe addiction, or other behavioral-health conditions.
Oregon needs both housing and treatment, matched to the needs of the individualiption text goes here
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Oregonians should be able to see where their money goes and whether programs work.
The Act would create a statewide homelessness and behavioral-health spending database showing:
State and local funding
Organizations receiving public dollars
Programs and services funded
Administrative and program expenditures
People served
Treatment and housing outcomes
Available and occupied treatment capacity
Agencies and publicly funded providers would submit standardized quarterly performance reports.
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Future funding decisions would incorporate measurable outcomes rather than relying primarily on dollars spent or people contacted.
Performance measures could include:
Treatment completion
Stable housing placement
Housing retention
Reduced returns to homelessness
Reduced emergency-room utilization
Reduced repeated criminal-justice involvement
Treatment-bed utilization
Programs consistently failing to meet established standards would be required to submit corrective-action plans before receiving continued or expanded funding.
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Behavioral-health and harm-reduction programs should be located where people can access medical and treatment services while protecting children and surrounding neighborhoods.
The Act would establish:
A complete ban around K–12 schools for needle distribution programs, along with siting standards encouraging higher-intensity behavioral-health and harm-reduction services near hospitals, medical centers, treatment providers, and appropriate transportation.
Oregon Public Safety &
Community Response Modernization Act
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Oregon cannot build a treatment-first system without enough places for people to receive treatment.
Establish a statewide strategy to expand behavioral-health capacity based on documented regional need, including:
Residential mental-health treatment
Substance-use disorder treatment
Withdrawal management and stabilization
Secure and intensive treatment when legally appropriate
Step-down and transitional recovery facilities
Supportive recovery housing
Leverage public-private partnerships, federal funding, hospitals, health systems, nonprofit providers, and qualified private providers to expand capacity rather than relying exclusively on state-operated facilities.
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Create a coordinated continuum so people do not simply move between the street, emergency rooms, jail, shelters, and temporary programs.
Stabilization → Treatment → Recovery → Housing → Independence
Require stronger coordination among behavioral-health providers, hospitals, housing providers, counties, coordinated care organizations, recovery organizations, and other publicly funded programs.
The objective is continuity: a person leaving one level of care should have a clear next destination whenever continued services are needed.
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The Act would support a range of housing options, including:
Emergency and transitional housing
Recovery housing
Permanent supportive housing
Workforce and affordable housing pathways
Permanent independent housing
Housing and treatment should work together rather than operate as disconnected systems.
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Create a public statewide homelessness and behavioral-health spending database so Oregonians can see where public dollars go and what those investments produce.
Track:
State and local funding
Organizations receiving public dollars
Programs and services funded
Administrative and program expenditures
People served
Treatment and housing outcomes
Treatment capacity and utilization
Require standardized reporting so lawmakers and the public can compare programs and outcomes across Oregon.
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Public funding should be connected to measurable performance.
Potential measures include:
Treatment access and completion
Housing placement and retention
Returns to homelessness
Repeat emergency-system involvement
Treatment-bed availability and utilization
Successful transitions between levels of care
Programs repeatedly failing established performance standards should move through graduated accountability:
Technical Assistance → Corrective-Action Plan → Enhanced Oversight → Funding Review
Major investments should also be subject to periodic independent performance and financial review.
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Behavioral-health and harm-reduction services should be accessible while recognizing their effects on surrounding communities.
Establish:
Siting standards encouraging higher-intensity behavioral-health and harm-reduction services near hospitals, medical centers, treatment providers, and appropriate transportation
Appropriate local input and transparency in siting decisions
OREGON PUBLIC DEFENSE CAPACITY & ACCOUNTABILITY ACT
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Establish a phased investment of approximately $150 million, subject to updated fiscal and workforce analysis, to rebuild Oregon's public-defense capacity.
Funding could support:
Additional public-defense attorneys
Investigators
Paralegals
Administrative and support personnel
Training
Technology
Regional offices and capacity
Recruitment and retention initiatives
The objective is not simply to increase spending. It is to increase the number of cases Oregon's public-defense system can responsibly handle.
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Public defenders should not be required to accept workloads that prevent them from providing constitutionally adequate representation.
Establish and enforce workload standards based on professional capacity rather than simply raw case counts.
Workload standards should recognize the actual demands of representation, including case complexity, investigation, client communication, court appearances, motions, discovery, negotiation, and trial preparation.
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Oregon's public-defense shortage does not affect every community equally.
Provide targeted recruitment and retention assistance for communities where attorneys are particularly difficult to recruit or retain.
Allow investments in regional capacity where shared infrastructure can improve access to representation across multiple communities.
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Oregon cannot solve a long-term attorney shortage without developing the next generation of public defenders.
Partner with Oregon law schools and other institutions to create stronger pathways into public-defense careers.
Potential investments may support internships, training, recruitment, professional development, and other initiatives designed to bring new attorneys into public defense and keep experienced attorneys in the profession.
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Require standardized performance reporting so lawmakers and the public can determine whether additional investment is solving the problem.
Track:
Attorney capacity
Caseloads
Number of unrepresented defendants
Wait time for counsel
Regional shortages
Case processing
Performance measures should focus on whether Oregon is actually increasing access to constitutionally adequate representation—not simply whether allocated money was spent.
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Require regular reporting to the Legislature on public-defense capacity, workforce conditions, expenditures, and results.
Major expenditures should receive independent review to determine whether investments are producing measurable increases in representation capacity.
Future funding decisions should be informed by demonstrated workforce and representation outcomes.