A new project in Maine will provide housing for chronically homeless people who have opioid use disorder.
The deadline for nonprofit organizations to put in bids to provide that housing was Wednesday. If all goes according to plan, two housing and treatment centers will open in Maine.
Gordon Smith is Maine's director of Opioid Response. He told Maine Public's Nora Flaherty that housing is a vital part of recovery, as is the treatment the centers will provide:
Smith: This is a very important program that takes 50 of the most vulnerable people in Maine, who have had long term substance-use disorder diagnoses and had challenges with housing, and tries to provide some housing and treatment to them.
It was originated in the legislature by Representative Gattine, and there was money found, eventually, to fund it to something over one million dollars. And there's housing aspects of it, and there are treatment aspects of it. And it's two projects, one in an urban area, which I would frankly expect to be probably in the Portland area, and the other has to be in a rural area. And so we think that program and the other program, providing assistance to recovery residences, is very important in our opioid response.
Flaherty: And what kind of treatment will this provide? I guess, specifically, will this provide medication-assisted treatment?
That's certainly the gold standard today. It's what the governor and I would expect the treatment to be about. But it's not just about the medication. The medication is very, very helpful to people in keeping them in long-term recovery. But the counseling and dealing with the basis of one's addiction, the root causes of addiction, are equally important.
The state is more broadly shifting toward including housing as part of its efforts to address the opioid crisis. Why is this happening, and why is it important?
Well, I've only been the director of Opioid Response since February, so recovery support has been at the top of our agenda. I've completed about 10 months, it was there in February, it continues to be a high priority.
We've done some strategic planning, and treatment is a top item, particularly vulnerable populations, but recovery-support is second, and so, you know, overdose response is in there as well, because you can't get people into recovery if they're not alive. And then prevention is there too.
So those are all four focused areas that are important. But recovery support has always been a very important issue to Governor Mills. The first thing we announced was that we were going to recruit and coordinate another 250 recovery coaches, but it's very difficult. People have basic needs, such as a roof over their head and a warm place to sleep at night. If that's not being met, it's extraordinarily difficult to keep people in successful recovery.
What is the cost of this program? And how much of that will be borne by the federal government, and how much by state governments?
Well, most of it is actually state money and it's over one million dollars that was appropriated. Some of it's for the housing piece, some it's for the treatment piece, but it's all, you know, we would hope that these individuals would be enrolled in Medicaid so that the money that this would be using would be things you'd be paying for things that Medicaid won't pay for.
You mentioned that one of these homes is going to be in an urban area and the other has to be in a rural area. Why is that vital for this program to succeed?
It was probably vital in the legislative debate, because of the make up of the Maine Legislature. But it's also true that there are many more resources for people in recovery in Southern Maine than there are in our more rural resources. So the legislature did really want to see the rural parts of the state benefit. So it was good. It was important to do politically, it was also the right thing to do.
Ed. note: this interview was edited for time and clarity
