Portland officials are zeroing in on what a new program intended to respond to low-priority calls involving people experiencing homelessness will look like.
At a City Hall meeting Thursday, commissioners accepted recommendations on the new program, which aims to provide a more compassionate response to people in crisis as well as free up emergency responders for life-threatening calls. The unit is slated to start answering 911 calls in the spring of 2020.
The program, officially called the Portland Street Response, will be based in Southeast Portland’s Lents neighborhood, where the fire bureau says they’ve seen the number of calls swell in the last five years.
“Lents is the perfect place to roll out this pilot,” said City Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty, who is spearheading the program and oversees the Portland Fire Bureau and the Bureau of Emergency Communications, two of the city agencies responsible for handling and answering 911 calls.