'Hope for the future': New inpatient center for homeless called key piece in fight against addiction

WEST JORDAN — Drug addiction has left a path of destruction in Amber Cleaveland's life, leading her to "stealing and robbing people to feed my habit," she admits.

But Cleaveland, now 178 days sober and determined to make something of herself, has an ambitious plan laid out for the days ahead.

Cleaveland's aim is to finish her drug court program and get her criminal record expunged. With that cleared up, she says, she will go to work finishing her practice flight hours to become a licensed private pilot, and explore a career path as an aviation technician.

"I (now) have coping skills and a new love for myself," Cleaveland says. "I found lasting sobriety and new hope for the future."

Indispensable to Cleaveland's new lease on life, she said, is her stringent regiment of substance abuse treatment at Valley Behavioral Health's new inpatient campus in West Jordan, where she has lived for about six weeks and expects to spend another month.

"It gives you an opportunity to be back in the real world," she said.

Valley Behavioral Health lauded Cleaveland's success story and others like hers in a ribbon cutting ceremony Thursday to celebrate the addition of new inpatient addiction treatment beds it can now use to serve the homeless, partly as a result of Operation Rio Grande.

Valley Behavioral Health's West Jordan facility, which began operating a small handful of treatment beds in January, now has 75 such beds in service with another 24 expected to come online within a few weeks.

The burgeoning new campus offers "a really needed program for our community at this time as we address the opiate epidemic," said Becky Brown, senior director of new business expansion for Valley Behavioral Health.

"We know this (kind of treatment) is one of the keys to breaking the chain of addiction," Brown told a crowd of more than 100 providers, clients and supporters who had gathered for Thursday's ceremony.

The new accommodations are the latest to be added in an effort to more than double the number of addiction treatment beds available for the homeless — one of the objectives of Operation Rio Grande, a multiagency operation launched in August 2017 in an effort to curb open-air drug dealing and other crimes in the neighborhood surrounding Salt Lake's downtown homeless shelter.

Out of $100 million in new funding for limited Medicaid expansion — which was designed to make 4,000 to 6,000 of Utah's very poorest eligible for insurance benefits and was federally approved late last year — $10 million was specifically set aside to fund a target of 240 residential treatment beds in connection with Operation Rio Grande.

Other new treatment beds have already become available through different providers, and within a few weeks, the number of beds opened for homeless clients since late 2017 will reach 276, exceeding Operation Rio Grande's goal by three dozen.

The total number of addiction treatment beds available for the homeless will have more than doubled since late last year, when just 170 were already in existence, a Salt Lake County spokeswoman confirmed.

Salt Lake County Mayor Ben McAdams told KSL that the county didn't want to throw its weight behind Operation Rio Grande if sought only to increase law enforcement near the shelter without also renewing an emphasis on addiction treatment funding.

"It had to be more than just platitudes," McAdams said, but rather a "significant" funding commitment.

McAdams told those gathered Thursday that he admired state officials for making that commitment. He particularly praised Lt. Gov. Spencer Cox, who was also on hand for the ribbon cutting, "for being a person of his word, for fighting hard battles ... and working across party lines to get things done."

The county "made the case for why it was going to be important and (that) it was going to cost money," McAdams said of the treatment component. "We made the decision to trust each other that day."

Cox said he and other state officials agreed with the county's assessment that "we can't just put people in jail."

"That doesn't solve the addiction problems," Cox said, because those who are incarcerated will "still have the same issues that got them there" once they're released.

McAdams asserted "treatment is not only the compassionate thing to do" for homeless people who struggle with drug use, but "also the fiscally responsible thing to do" because it costs less than having them cycle through jail multiple times.

Brown said Medicaid eligibility expansion, the treatment bed funding made available as part of Operation Rio Grande, and state officials obtaining an exception to Medicaid regulations putting a 16-bed limit on addiction treatment facilities "all sort of came through at the same time," making the new inpatient campus a feasible undertaking.

It wasn't until late November that all those pieces fell into place, Brown said, so it was a demanding turnaround to bring the inpatient campus to life by mid-January and bring it to full capacity by summertime.

Already, all but four of the operational beds are actively being used, Brown said, and "we are in the process of filling" those remaining, pending minor logistical hurdles. The high demand also means the beds opening in coming weeks will be filled almost immediately, she said.

Residents who progress well and move out can also use the campus for outpatient services of varying intensity, according to Brown.

Gary Larcenaire, CEO of Valley Behavioral Health, said he hopes the treatment model offered on the campus will "help people experience hope in their lives again after such difficult beginnings." That will require residents at different stages of progress to support each other, he said.

"You need people to mature through it and gain skills to help the newly admitted," Larcenaire said.

Already, Cleaveland has her eyes on paying it forward for others who come through the campus.

"I would like to help other women find light and hope, because there is hope," she said.

Related topics