On Monday, the City of Eugene and White Bird Clinic announced that mobile crisis response service CAHOOTS would no longer serve Eugene due to contract and funding issues.
White Bird said it did not have the financial capacity to continue the nationally-known program, and had laid off a significant portion of CAHOOTS workers. The union representing crisis workers had warned of potential interruptions of service and raised concerns about the organization's financial liability for months.
CAHOOTS, which stands for Crisis Assistance Helping Out On The Streets, will continue to be available in Springfield from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. daily. Many of White Bird’s other services also will continue in Eugene, including its Harm Reduction and Treatment Center, which opened less than a year ago. Other services, such as its Front Rooms program, have already closed.
Oregon on the Record’s Michael Dunne spoke with KLCC reporter Rebecca Hansen-White about factors that led to the changes at CAHOOTS.
Dunne: I know you've been covering what's been happening with White Bird and CAHOOTS, and I know that we had a story just last week about that they were moving to two shifts a week because of budget cuts. What happened?
Hansen-White: Yeah, so our reporter Nathan Wilk’s story was accurate. [White Bird] was going down to two shifts a week. White Bird had announced that because of some financial challenges that they had. But once the city was informed of that, they had some concerns. I spoke to Eugene Springfield Fire Chief Mike Caven, and he told me that previously, the city had contracted with White Bird to be available 24/7.
“It’s a 90% service reduction,” Caven told KLCC. “And so we're working through what the viability is. Operating in that way is very inconsistent for other service providers and us, and the emergency response system, to only have a resource for a couple of shifts in a week, which is a big difference from the contract.”
Hansen-White: The city approached White Bird to say, that's not what we have contracted for, and that's not what the agreement is, and the end was effective Monday.
Dunne: What did you find out in terms of the financial challenges? Was it Medicaid reimbursement, lack of grants, or just overall cuts in as we've seen across the board, federal funding cuts?
Hansen-White: I would say those are all factors, but, we'll break them down one at a time. We’ll start with the local funding: White Bird’s Interim Executive Director Amée Markwardt told me the amount of money the city paid for CAHOOTS covered about 40% of the cost of providing those services here in Eugene. A pretty big portion of the rest of those services is paid for with federal grants, which have become a lot more complicated.
“Agencies and governments are going through kind of this tightening of the belt, you could say,” Markwardt told KLCC. “As you see in the news everywhere, with federal government freezing funds or unfreezing them or cutting money. White Bird has been pretty impacted. We do our best to keep services going, but it became a risk where we could lose the agency as a whole, and so we had to [have] some really challenging conversations with staff.”
Hansen-White: Now the Trump administration has put some new requirements to get that money. A lot of service providers are very concerned that they're not going to get the money that they have contracted for, that has been promised to them, that they have been budgeting for, because of the requirements from the Trump administration about making sure they follow the "no DEI directives" or and just general confusion.
Dunne: We're also talking about people, people who work for CAHOOTS, that provide these important crisis support services. What's going to happen with those folks?
Hansen-White: About 20 CAHOOTS workers that I that I know of, and that is what the executive director, Amée Markwardt, told me, have been laid off. We knew about a month ago that the layoffs were going to happen, but a lot of them didn't become effective until this week. But yeah, there, there are people that have been laid off this week with the services ending in Eugene.
Dunne: As best you can -- what's next for crisis services and responses in our community in Eugene?
Hansen-White: In terms of what's next for the City of Eugene, they are going to work with Lane County's mobile crisis response team to provide some of those services that CAHOOTS did. Budget talks for the next two years are happening now, so we might see some longer-term decisions soon. When I talked to Eugene Springfield Fire Chief Mike Caven, he said that won't completely fill in the gap left by CAHOOTS.
Some of those social service things that CAHOOTS did in Eugene, such as housing and transportation, Lane County's mental health team cannot provide right now.
Caven said those in crisis can still get help. With CAHOOTS not necessarily working here -- that doesn't mean that if you're in crisis, you're out of luck. Call 988, if you need help.
Lane County has a mental health line as well. If you have an emergency, you can still call 911, and somebody is going to be on the line that can help you.
As for White Bird specifically, I talked to Amée Markwardt about this, she said that White Bird is planning a fundraiser soon, specifically for CAHOOTS in hopes of restoring those services. They're also looking at other strategies, specifically, Medicaid funding. Medicaid funding is an important part of what White Bird does, but it's pretty tough to reimburse insurance for street response work.
“Our struggles is, how in the world, in the middle of a crisis on the corner of a street, do you say, ‘hey, I know you're struggling, can I get your name and your insurance and then we'll help you figure it out?” Markwardt said. “That's just a really challenging position to put both clients and staff in. And I'm not saying that's the process of how that would go about, but in theory, that seems challenging”
Hansen-White: Medicaid funding for other reasons is a little uncertain right now, but White Bird is looking into it as a way to, hopefully bill for some of those services that are, I would say, health care. Mental health also is health care and what CAHOOTS does works and it's preventative and it's effective. [White Bird] is looking for some other ways to try to make it more financially sustainable, so fundraising and maybe Medicaid.
