Read the Seattle Times article “Where did King County’s mental health beds go?” Posted Feb. 25, 2023
Excerpt from Hannah Furfaro’s Seattle Times article
“We’re what there used to be a lot of in this town,” said Chris Szala, who has been executive director of the nonprofit since 1991. “That’s disappeared.”
On the first floor of Community House’s headquarters on Jackson Street, residents and guests can wash laundry, take a shower, stock up on food or visit with a psychiatric nurse practitioner who prescribes medication. Upstairs, people with persistent mental illness live in 54 single-occupancy units. Most come to Community House by referral from a hospital or a jail.
Community House is King County’s largest licensed, 24-hour provider of residential mental health beds. It operates several 24-hour assisted living facilities, transitional homes and supportive housing units. Still, many of its facilities have closed. …
“I have no doubt that the state had every right to sanction things at times,” Szala said. “There just wasn’t the money to take care of it.”
Everyone interviewed for this story repeated Szala’s concern. Most mental health facilities were paid a daily rate to care for residents. But they had few options to pay for upkeep.
When Szala took over at Community House more than 30 years ago, land was relatively inexpensive, and building or leasing large properties for mental health care was feasible. By the late 1990s, though, many mental health facilities were suddenly put under the same umbrella as assisted living facilities, a designation that came with much stricter regulations and training requirements. These extra regulatory burdens didn’t come with extra reimbursement, Szala said. And by the time the state sanctions came down, Seattle was an incredibly expensive city to do business in.
The county was ultimately faced with subsidizing buildings in need of repair — or letting them close.
“The boat was missed” to buy and make permanent the kind of residential mental health facilities that are now sorely needed, Szala said.
Read the full article “Where did King County’s mental health beds go?”
