![]() ![]() Lawmakers will continue their push to make homeless-services reform a statewide priority, Hughes said. 22, including supportive housing and drug and mental-health treatment. Smith and Hauser focused on issues that are slated to dominate the upcoming legislative session, six weeks of policymaking that begins Jan. “Failure to treat this population, that has multiple problems, overdoses in the emergency room, medical, hepatitis, infections,” he said, “is very expensive.” Smith said that every $1 spent on treatment and other help for people with addiction and those who are homeless can save $7 in health and other social services spending. The medical community has since grown to accept and embrace substance-abuse treatment as a way to help a high-needs population. Drug use was a crime, and treating people for conditions associated with substance abuse was a risk for physicians. The concept of treating drug addicts like patients, he said, was unheard of at the time. Smith founded a free clinic in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury neighborhood in 1967. House Speaker Greg Hughes, who attended Odyssey’s new opening, also welcomed two national experts on homelessness - Mary Hauser and David Smith - to the Utah Capitol on Thursday. Since receiving therapy, Santizo has regained custody of her son, now 18, and daughter, 15, and is six years sober. She now works as the recovery outreach specialist for the nonprofit, marketing the program to individuals going through an addiction like she did. “Odyssey House allowed a safe place for me to walk through and face my fears and my reasons why I chose to do drugs.” ![]() “My self-value was measured by dumpster diving and being pistol-whipped by my abusive boyfriend,” she said. Santizo said she quickly slid into homelessness from there and lost custody of her two kids. And she injected seven to 10 times a day. At 24, she was diagnosed with fibromyalgia, which causes muscle pain and fatigue, and started taking Percocet and Lortab to help. Rachel Santizo completed the yearlong program at Odyssey House in 2013. The 30-year-old building was originally used as a mental-health facility and required little renovation to meet the treatment center’s needs (including a garden and meditation area). Inside the new U-shaped dormitory, nestled in a quiet Millcreek neighborhood, twin-size beds filled the rooms nearly ready for move-in day next week. But with a waiver from the federal government that lifts the cap, Utah providers can now drastically boost their numbers of beds without losing that financing. The ribbon-cutting Thursday for the center’s new expansion would not have been possible just two months ago when drug-treatment funding through Medicaid was limited to facilities with fewer than 16 beds. The opioid crisis, she said, is driving most of the demand (accounting for 50 percent of the program’s clients). Odyssey House now has 240 beds spread over a handful of Utah facilities - and the program is admitting up to 10 people a day, said chief operating officer Christina Zidow. The first 37 beds came online within weeks of the initial sweep as arrests outpaced the demand for jail space. “We have all come to the conclusion very quickly that the answer to all of our challenges is to open wider the doors to treatment,” said Salt Lake County Mayor Ben McAdams.īehavioral-health treatment is considered “Phase Two” of the $67 million operation that looks to reduce lawlessness, violence and drug dealing near the downtown Salt Lake City shelter. ![]()
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