It’s been just over a year since the crisis intervention program CAHOOTS stopped providing services in Eugene after the city decided to end its contract with the organization. The mobile team had operated in the city since 1989. Lane County launched its own crisis response team in 2024, and now, the city is partnering with Ideal Option to send peer navigators on non-emergency calls. Navigators will respond to welfare checks and connect community members to housing, behavioral health, and other services.
Eugene-Springfield Fire Chief Mike Caven joins us to talk about the new program and the state of emergency response services in Eugene.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. It has been just over a year since the city of Eugene ended its contract with the crisis intervention program CAHOOTS. The mobile team had operated in the city since 1989. Lane County launched its own crisis response team in 2024, and now, the city is partnering with a company called Ideal Option to send peer navigators on non-emergency calls. Navigators will respond to welfare checks and connect community members to housing, behavioral health and other services.
Eugene-Springfield Fire Chief Mike Caven joins us now to talk about this new program. It’s great to have you on the show.
Mike Caven: Thanks for the invite.
Miller: Just as a reminder, because it’s been a little while since we talked about CAHOOTS, can you remind us what kinds of services they provided in Eugene?
Caven: For a long time, as you mentioned, CAHOOTS provided acute behavioral health crisis response, in addition to peer-led service contacts out on the street for homeless services, some basic medical needs. They really became a Swiss Army knife, in a space that had no other services but police and fire.
Miller: And why was it shut down? What happened with the contract?
Caven: They had some funding challenges, I believe with some grants and other things. What led to a mutual termination of that contract was they reduced their service hours in the city of Eugene by 90%. That wasn’t going to work for us in our ability to figure out how to fill the void if they were going to operate one to two days a week, when just nine months earlier, we had signed a contract that called for 36 hours per day. Basically, a unit-and-a-half available 24/7. So ultimately that led to a mutual termination of that contract.
Miller: After CAHOOTS stopped operating there, what did you see as emergency responders, in terms of call volume?
Caven: The reality is, especially in the beginning, we really didn’t see anything on the police and fire side. Call volumes in the fire department for EMS went down slightly. We did see a one call per day increase for calls that have a behavioral health component or substance abuse component to them. Then over time, the police department saw an uptick in welfare checks where subject-down calls, which are effectively a welfare check that is out on the street … Somebody drives by with a cell phone and calls 911 to say that they’re not sure what the person’s situation is. Those have been the core call increases.
Miller: It’s interesting though that you didn’t see an immediate uptick when CAHOOTS stopped. It’s a little bit surprising. To me, it’s counterintuitive. How do you explain that?
Caven: There’s some good statistics about what they were able to do in the system or some, some predictions on what was happening. A lot of that work was self-initiated, where they would go out and see people experiencing challenges and address those, in between being sent to calls for service. One of the challenges that we had for a very long time was that there was no data coming out of that system. There’s no mechanism to report back to the city.
We knew what they were being sent to, but we never got disposition on, what did they find? Did they find anything? Did they treat or transport? Did the person get out of the situation that they were in? Especially now in the modern era, where data drives just about everything, including the federal funding for programs like CAHOOTS, ironically named after them.
Miller: So at the time, when CAHOOTS was going to stop operating in the area, we heard that the Lane County Mobile Crisis team could fill some of those gaps. Did that happen?
Caven: It did. The reality is, in this space in the modern era, the Oregon Legislature passed a law in 2018 that required counties to provide a provision for 24-hour mobile crisis response. There was a lead time, like any unfunded mandate from the state, for implementation. The fire department took over the contract with CAHOOTS, from the police department in 2023. And over 2024, we had worked with the county and White Bird [Clinic] to potentially make that CAHOOTS model the contractor for the county.
The county, initially, was looking for a vendor to provide the work because it’s a complicated process to add new positions in the public sector. Ultimately, they couldn’t land on a contract or an agreement on how the work was to be done, and the county had to get their resources stood up. So there’s a feeling out there that the county edged CAHOOTS out of the system, when the reality is they really wanted that model. It just didn’t align with their timeframe or the regulatory and reporting requirements for a program like that.
Miller: So let’s turn to the more recent story. What gaps still remain? What was the city looking for when it put out the request for proposals?
Caven: We did a gap analysis, [which] kicked off shortly after the shutdown, to understand what was happening on the street. [We conducted] interviews with service providers, responders, and then again, a review of the data. We knew the county had the responsibility to respond to mobile crises, and we saw their demand for service increase when CAHOOTS shut down. So they were filling that gap, and they need to continue to staff up and address the service needs there.
We had established our community paramedic program and saw that grow after the closure of the University District Hospital in downtown Eugene, out of necessity. So we had some of that street level and chronic 911 user issues addressed for medical work, and then we had the mobile crisis work addressed. There was some question about youth crisis services. There was a program the county contracted with called Riverview, who is providing that. So we were able to clear that issue up. Ultimately, as of May 1, the county will be responsible for the youth mobile crisis as well.
What we wanted to see is, void of significant data or demand to inform what we should put out in the street, we wanted to get some peers out there who have experience to get in front of these folks and see what their needs are, to get them to services, to get them out of the situation that they’re in; but also to provide feedback back to the fire department in the city. What gaps are you unable or untrained to fill that maybe we do need to fill, or are there none? We want to be thoughtful as we step back into this space with limited public dollars and say if somebody else is responsible for the work, it doesn’t make good sense to reproduce it. It makes best sense to figure out where to invest. So with that, our report issued at the end of 2025 called for limited geographic area to high volume, high challenge areas, and then peak hour times when people are seeking services in the system.
Ultimately, when we issued that RFP, Ideal Option responded with a proposal that was pretty direct. It also came with some additional options of contracted stability units. Meaning, if somebody’s seeking help or acknowledges that they want to get help and they want to get out of their situation, if you don’t have the ability to address that in the moment, they pretty rapidly slide back into the situation that they’re in, or you can’t find them again. So they bring to the table some spaces that they’re able to take folks to, to stabilize them, to then get them to the long-term assistance they need – whether that’s treatment, counseling or housing stability support.
Miller: Can you give us a sense for what exact kinds of calls Ideal Option will be going out for?
Caven: A lot of those are going to be the welfare check, the subject-down type calls in those areas because they’re going to be out doing field outreach already. When those calls come in, typically, unless there’s some indication of a crime or a significant life threat, they can wait for a while. Having an alternative resource available to send over there and check what they need … And what we found when we respond to those calls or when law enforcement responds to those calls, those are people in need of some sort of stability type service.
Miller: Just to be clear, because you’ve said “subject-down” a couple of times, I want to make sure I understand that. So what is a subject-down call?
Caven: It is a broad descriptor for [when] somebody drove by, walked by or they’re outside their business and they’re sleeping on the sidewalk. They’re in the bushes. Maybe they’re intoxicated and passed out. It really encompasses all sorts of things for somebody down on the ground. What we know from our data tracking is a very, very small percentage of those are experiencing a health care related issue. Usually it’s a trespass or some other non-criminal nuisance type situation.
We know a large majority of those folks really need some access to services and support, which Ideal Option brings. They also bring, in this contract, the responsibility to follow up and report back. Are we making progress for folks? Who doesn’t want help? And that way, we can track and understand how we support them and the community’s needs at the same time.
Miller: Well, so that gets to – because you mentioned data a couple of times – how will you evaluate whether this system or a whole set of different responders? How do you assess if it’s working?
Caven: The primary thing is reduction in repeat 911 calls for unique individuals. But also, you see improvements of people accessing the service in the system who are making progress. And the requirement of the RFP required anybody bidding, to bring forth a program to track and report demographics, the challenges that the people are experiencing, what service did you link them to.
So once that’s running, again, you have an extra set of eyes with a different perspective. It’s not fire and EMS, not law enforcement. It is a peer, somebody with lived experience in navigating the system, that’s out there going, OK, but here’s a spot where we’re either unable or, again, unequipped to address this person’s needs. Then we have to answer the question, is it a law enforcement issue, an EMS issue, a Lane County mobile crisis issue? Or is that phase two consideration, something where we need to expand or invest in the resource?
Miller: As you’re describing that, it really does seem that one of the increasing complexities here is that dispatching decision itself. I mean, you’ve just outlined four different potential folks who, once a call comes in, could be dispatched to go for any particular situation. Am I right that it’s up to the dispatcher to say, “huh, based on what I’m hearing, this is the kind of person who should go out?” It just seems like a lot to put in on the plate of the dispatchers.
Caven: I’m glad you brought that up. They’re amazing individuals who sort through a ton of insane information and make sure the right resources are going to our calls.
Miller: Insane information?
Caven: Yeah. You think about how they sort through that. But they are very protocol and algorithm based on that. Is it a crisis? Is it an acute crisis? Well, that gets forwarded over to the county and that call comes completely off their plate. If it’s a law enforcement or fire issue, those are pretty clear. If a crime is being committed, somebody’s on fire or somebody’s experienced a medical emergency. They have a whole set of triage processes for that. They’re good at what they do. But we ask a lot of them.
Miller: It does seem like the edge cases might be more challenging. If it’s “subject-down,” as you said earlier, how do you know it’s not an overdose where you really would want immediate medical help, as opposed to someone who’s sleeping?
Caven: That’s a great question. As I pointed out earlier, how we had come to the conclusion on those was looking at the data. And we had studied over 1,500 of those calls to understand that less than 1% of them were actually experiencing any kind of medical emergency and even far less that they were experiencing something more significant. Oftentimes, what we find is it’s pretty rare that somebody’s by themselves on a sidewalk or something like that, experiencing an overdose episode. Fortunately, there’s usually other people around for those.
But that’s also why we wanted this additional responder available out there, so that those calls don’t wait too long before somebody goes by and checks. A lot of the times, in the current environment and in the past environment, our data would show that sometimes it would take CAHOOTS in excess of an hour to get to some calls, especially if they’re busy, longer, or never. And on those subject-down calls, it’s not uncommon for that program or law enforcement to go by and the person’s not there anymore. They’ve moved on. They were resting or whatever they needed at the time, but it wasn’t a law enforcement, fire and EMS problem.
Miller: Mike Caven, thanks very much.
Caven: Yeah.
Miller: Mike Caven is Eugene-Springfield Fire Chief.
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