Grants Pass panel says treatment beds, coordination and housing must expand to ease homelessness

Grants Pass City Manager Aaron Kubik told the city council on Feb. 4 that the meeting was the first of several workshops intended to build a coordinated response to homelessness in Grants Pass. Kubik said the panel would describe current services, gaps and measures of success and that council would have time for questions after the panel finished speaking.

Panel members representing nonprofit service providers said the region has broad service activity but acute shortages in treatment capacity, transitional and permanent housing, and staff to run higher-level clinical programs. The shortages mean people who are ready for treatment often wait on long lists, providers said, and that attrition during wait periods undermines outcomes.

The lack of residential treatment beds drew repeated attention: "We have 330 people on the wait list for residential treatment right now, and that's for 47 beds," said Summer Walcott, executive director of OnTrack. Walcott said the agency’s emergency lodging work has moved 139 chronically unhoused people into treatment so far, a 68 percent success rate for the emergency-lodging pathway into withdrawal management or residential care.

Providers emphasized that shelters and outreach produce improvements but are not a substitute for the full continuum of care. "Everybody that stays at the Gospel Rescue Mission leaves in better condition than they came," said Brian, a representative of the Gospel Rescue Mission, who described last year’s outcomes including more than 50,000 hot meals served and at least 388…