Deflection has failed in Multnomah County. That’s not an opinion, it’s a fact. And failure was predetermined by the County’s own ridiculous definition of “success” that had nothing whatsoever to do with people’s success in recovering from addiction, but everything to do with performative politics. It’s quite a feat that the County failed even by their own preposterous metrics.

The question isn’t how many people were “dropped off” at a building, how many people were “referred” to services having nothing to do with addiction treatment, or even how many people who were referred to treatment actually made it to treatment (that number in Multnomah County was ONE, by the way, and the County doesn’t even know if that single person completed their treatment). 

The ONLY question we should be demanding an answer to is how many people who opted for deflection actually received treatment, completed their program, and are on a stable path to recovery with the housing and services they need? 

And this is precisely what the County doesn’t track. In fact, County leadership freely admits to not caring whether people pursue treatment, and acknowledges that most of their work to date has been guesswork. 

I’ll paste the chair’s own comments here because they are just so ludicrous:

‘ENCOURAGING TRENDS’

Multnomah County does not track whether people end up pursuing treatment, said Natalie Minas, a senior policy adviser in Chair Jessica Vega Pederson’s office.

“After somebody has exited their 30-day window, we don’t have the staff or the protocols to continue checking in with them,” she said.

Vega Pederson, who has led the county’s approach, said it was difficult to predict how many people would opt for deflection.

“For me, this whole year has been about trying to guess what the need was going to be as we were trying to build up services,” she said. “I think overall, I would say, I think we’re seeing some encouraging trends.”

The fact is that there are programs that work. Addiction is a chronic relapsing medical illness that can be treated. People recover from addiction every day, supported by incredible providers who help them on their journey. 

What’s appalling here is not just the ineptitude of leadership that led to this deflection debacle (which truly cannot be overstated), but that real people with addiction are being harmed because so much time and money has been wasted instead of being invested in programs that work.