Oregon Treatment Bed Rollout Trails State's Own Projections, Court Filing Shows

Oregon's health agency told a federal judge in late summer 2025 that it was on the verge of a major expansion in residential treatment capacity. A year on, a new court filing shows the rollout has fallen well short of that forecast.

The Oregon Health Authority is under court order to speed treatment for people charged with crimes who have been found too mentally ill to stand trial and who are held in jail while they wait. The agency's position was that the underlying problem was inadequate capacity. Oregon State Hospital, the state's highest-acuity psychiatric institution, was full, so more licensed residential beds were needed in the community.

Ebony Clark, the agency's behavioral health director, wrote in one filing that the most direct way to comply with the order was to "build enough capacity in the community" to place patients ready to leave the state hospital or to divert them from entering it at all. The agency said the Legislature had provided hundreds of millions of dollars over five years for that purpose, and it submitted a graph of newly opened beds funded by its Behavioral Health Investments team. The line climbed sharply starting in mid-2025, the point where the data shifted from past results to projections.

A filing the state submitted last month tells a different story. A new graph looks similar at first glance, but its timeline runs to 2029 rather than 2027, while the total number of expected new beds has not risen much. The agency now projects comparable results, but later. A year ago it said the Behavioral Health Investments program would add 689 residential treatment beds by October 2026. The updated figure is 377, just over half.

Tom Stenson, deputy legal director at Disability Rights Oregon, said there is a wide gap between what the public is told will happen and what occurs. "We put out a shiny report that says Oregon is in the process of building this gigantic amount of behavioral health resources that never quite arrive," he said.

The agency does not dispute the delays but says the timeline estimates come from the private organizations it contracts with to build and run the facilities. Spokeswoman Amber Shoebridge pointed to construction costs and labor shortages, which she said the agency cannot eliminate and which shift project completion dates. She said that, counting beds licensed outside the special program, the state has licensed more than 1,000 new treatment beds since 2023, and expects that to exceed 1,700 by the end of 2028. "OHA is committed to continuing this unprecedented bed expansion," she said.

Gov. Tina Kotek says conditions have improved, arguing that residential treatment was built out "willy-nilly" before her administration brought strategy and more centralized funding. She said she wants a "culture of urgency" at the agency but acknowledged that delays remain a frustration. "The health authority needs to move the money fast, provide the technical assistance, and say, 'Why aren't those doors open yet?'" she said, calling that "a work in progress."

The agency is also without a permanent leader. Director Sejal Hathi, whom Kotek appointed, resigned this past summer amid criticism. Sen. Lisa Reynolds (D-Northwest Portland), who chairs the Senate Committee on Early Childhood and Behavioral Health, described the agency as "going through turmoil right now."

Reynolds said she expects a report on the build-out at December hearings and that she had not realized the agency had missed its projections. "Accountability is hard to do, right?" she said. "We hold committee hearings, but I think there has to be more consequences."