PORTLAND, Ore. (KATU) — Every day for the past two months, Michelle Woldrich wakes up and marks an “X” on her calendar, counting down the days until she gets home to her boyfriend.

She credits him with motivating her to enter a residential treatment program.

“My boyfriend said, ‘I’ve had enough, that’s it. I’m done, you either go back to treatment or you get out of here.’ I chose a better life, so I’m here,” Woldrich said.

Having a safe place to go once her 90-day residential program is complete makes a big difference in relapse prevention, but for people who, unlike her, don’t have a supportive family environment to turn to return, the recovery journey can be very long. more and cause more congestion on Oregon’s already overburdened recovery network.

“I’m here for 90 days, but people who need housing are here for 120,” Woldrich said.

Fora Health CEO Devarshi Bajpai says there are two ways recovery housing can help reduce the waiting list for residential treatment beds.

“I’ve seen estimates that about half of people who need residential care go into that level of care. I think many of these people could go into residential plus outpatient and get much better care than they get on a residential waiting list. bed,” he said, adding that recovery housing can also help increase turnover rates for those much-needed residential treatment beds.

“It’s really important when people leave residential treatment that they continue to do outpatient treatment. We try to get them into outpatient treatment, but it’s really hard to get people involved if they don’t have safe and stable housing,” he said, noting. that the lack of recovery housing is causing people to stay in residential treatment longer than necessary.

The county is in the process of adding 250 recovery housing beds to help alleviate some of that pressure. The project price tag is $14.4 million, with funding coming from the Tri-County Supportive Housing Services Tax, opioid settlement money and the county’s general fund.

Some of the beds are already online, while others are in the works, with a final completion date of fall 2026.

While OHA is tracking (at the request of Gov. Tina Kotek) its progress toward goals of meeting Oregon’s need for inpatient treatment beds, it is not tracking the recovery housing shortage.