Racheale vividly remembers the moment she felt confident that life on the streets of Portland — after five years of struggling with soul-crushing personal loss and drug use to help numb her mind and pain — soon might be behind her.
It was late summer 2024. Racheale, then 38, was in downtown Portland at Multnomah County’s Behavioral Health Resource Center. She answered a phone call offering her a 30-day shelter bed on the center’s third floor operated by Do Good Multnomah — time she would use to map out her next steps toward stability.
“I was so nervous,” she says. “They interviewed me, had me fill out some paperwork. And at that point, it was like, I was in. And that’s where it felt solid. I felt like, ‘Okay, I can do this.’”
Now, seven months later, Racheale’s life is nearly unrecognizable. She rents her own apartment in Southwest Portland, instead of sleeping in a car or couch-surfing. She works part-time instead of bouncing between residential treatment centers. She is studying online for a bachelor’s degree in business administration instead of struggling with substance use.
Racheale says she didn’t even know about the Behavioral Health Resource Center until her boyfriend, Kasey, provided her the “directional push” to visit the facility’s day center and give it a shot. And she’s deeply grateful for Do Good Multnomah, particularly for Program Team Manager Dane Achalas, Clinical Team Manager Mia Edera, and Rachaele’s first case manager, whom she refers to as Joe.
“I had lost hope. And the BHRC gave that to me. They gave me encouragement. They gave me compassion. They listened, they understood,” Racheale says. “They were able to accommodate me when I needed it. Whatever situation it was, they were so supportive in the process.”
The County’s Behavioral Health Resource Center, which celebrated its two-year anniversary in December 2024, offers escalating levels of services to hundreds of people a year.
The first and second floor provide a peer-led drop-in day center, operated by the Mental Health & Addiction Association of Oregon, that meets basic needs and offers services as meals, laundry and showers.
And Do Good Multnomah, with a 27-member program team and five-member clinical team, provides 30 beds of behavioral-health-focused shelter on the third floor along with 19 beds of 90-day transitional or “bridge” housing on the fourth floor.
Rachaele spent five months working with Do Good Multnomah’s programs on the third and fourth floors. The team then found Rachaele an apartment, helped her through the application process, and even made sure she had furniture and all the touches of home when she moved in.
Learning that many Do Good Multnomah staff shared a similar background or experiences made building connections easier for Racheale.
“They’ve seen it, they've been (through) it, they've lived it," she says. “And with them, I felt safe. I felt like I could trust what I was going to do with my life through them, because they gave me that structure that I needed in the beginning.”
Indeed, Achalas describes the Behavioral Health Resource Center as being “peer-driven from the ground up.”
“A huge portion of our staff has lived experience with substance use,” he says. “People come from all kinds of different places before they get here. Different backgrounds, experiences in the week, experiences that day.”
Staff work hard to make connections with program participants from the get-go. That starts with initial introductions — often over conversation, food, and coffee or water. Sometimes, they might instead immediately show the participant to their bed first for much-needed sleep. Next up is addressing basic administrative needs: providing intake packets, heat-treating personal items, assigning case managers.
“I’d say 30 days is a good average for most of our participants,” Achalas says.
For those like Racheale, Achalas says additional steps include identifying any sources of income, work possibilities and arranging a housing assessment.
“We’re figuring out what sort of housing, what part of town. We start to lay the puzzle pieces on the table so that we can figure out the direction that we’re going.”
Racheale says her circumstances turned suddenly and swiftly when her husband died in 2019 after a nearly 10-year marriage and long partnership before. She had never held a job or needed one, she says, because her husband was “a good provider.” Her mom, who passed away a year before her husband, was always there when needed. And Racheale was “daddy’s little girl.” “I always had a support network.”
Until she didn’t. A year after her husband died, so did her dad, followed by her stepfather soon after. Racheale says she felt alone and lost.
“I could never get over the grieving process,” she says. “So I went straight to the streets, straight to drugs. I let my kids move in with my aunt and uncle because that was the safest place for them to be.… I didn’t know how to get back on my feet.”
Last summer, Racheale was couch-surfing at a friend’s place for a couple of days when Do Good Multnomah called to offer her shelter . It was just in time. She was only able to stay with her friend for a week, and she had to leave during the day, taking with her several backpacks with belongings that included a change of clothes and shoes.
“It’s the worst,” she says of life on the streets.
“Because you lose everything when you’re homeless. So many times. You’ll replace it, and it’s stolen from you. It’s crazy.”
Once she settled into her shelter bed, Racheale says she felt stable and secure enough in her surroundings to more strongly commit to starting — and completing — a three-month treatment program.
She says she got a big assist from Do Good Multnomah, which gave her bus passes for the round-trip commute from downtown to the treatment site at N.E. 122nd Avenue and Burnside Street. She made the journey three days a week for the program’s first two months, stepping down to two days weekly for the last month.
“It’s all from me being here,” Racheale says of the BHRC. “I’m just soaring, and it feels good to finally be soaring.”
Racheale says proudly that after two relapses, she’s completed alcohol and drug treatment thanks to the stability provided first by the Behavioral Health Resource Center and now with a home of her own. She’s rekindling relationships with her three children, ages 20, 17 and 10.
“When you lose yourself after so many years, you just don’t know how to pick up your pieces,” she says. “I really had to focus on myself and learn to love myself.
“If you look back at my last five years and you look at me now, I’m happy. I love myself. I love where I'm at. I love my apartment. I love all the things that this place has helped me learn about myself and who I am and how I have a future. And how I’m worth it.”
