ONTARIO — “The Flats” can’t be found on any city map of Ontario.

Just past the city limits of this rough-hewn Oregon border town, a rutted gravel road runs toward the informal settlement of boarded-up homes, dilapidated RVs and two-wheeled trailers clustered in a grassy field.

During a chilly morning patrol, Ontario police and Malheur County sheriff’s deputies converged on the camp, zeroing in on a strung-out man slumped in an SUV.

The officers were 400 miles away from the dens of open drug use in downtown Portland, but the signs of addiction and despair are just as evident here in rural Eastern Oregon.

Drug addiction isn’t new, but decriminalization is — and police, elected officials and some of the area’s addiction treatment providers say Measure 110 has made matters worse.

“It’s hurting us,” said Ontario Mayor Deborah Folden. “Drug use has just really, really increased. There’s a lot more homeless people that are living here, too.”

Measure 110, a first-in-the-nation law that changed possession of small amounts of street drugs from a crime to a violation punishable by fine, has faced a sharp backlash since it went into effect in February 2021 during the pandemic and as fentanyl trafficking and use gripped the nation. Critics say the measure has contributed to addiction and made it harder to get a handle on homelessness.

Top Democratic state lawmakers have proposed re-criminalizing drug possession as a low-level misdemeanor. That may not be enough to satisfy business leaders backing a ballot measure to make drug possession a more serious misdemeanor punishable by as many as 364 days in jail.

The Oregonian/OregonLive conducted dozens of interviews in Ontario — an oft-overlooked part of the state where decriminalization raised particular concerns about the area becoming a magnet for people from Idaho seeking a less stringent attitude toward drugs as well as help with housing and treatment.

The newspaper reviewed records, audits and Oregon Health Authority data and scrutinized hours of public meetings from Measure 110′s oversight council to find out how the measure affected Malheur County, where 61% of voters rejected the measure.

The state’s own data shows the number of substance use disorder patients has plummeted in the county since Measure 110′s start — which service providers say is due to the decrease in court-ordered drug treatment.

“There used to be more of a stick, at times, to be able to get people into treatment,” said Ron Van Ausdal, clinical director of outpatient services at Lifeways, the mental health and substance use treatment provider for Malheur County.

Federal tallies show an increase in homelessness here compared to pre-pandemic levels, while nuisance crimes such as extended parking, camping and city code violations have also risen, according to police data. Fatal overdoses and poisonings doubled in the county from 2020 to 2022, state health statistics show.

And while supporters of Measure 110 sold the proposal to voters on the promise of increasing access to treatment and housing by tapping marijuana tax revenue, the measure failed to bridge the missing link in Malheur County’s drug treatment system: a place to supervise people undergoing withdrawal from alcohol or drugs and manage their care.

“People need detox right now,” said Chana Williams, a certified recovery mentor at Lifeways, “and we have nowhere to send them here.”

Instead, one of the three providers bolstered by Measure 110 money in Malheur County had its funding yanked after health officials found the organization’s reports were so rife with inconsistencies that it was “impossible to ascertain what services were provided,” according to a presentation by the Oregon Health Authority.

At The Flats, the complications all come to a head: drug addiction, a homelessness crisis many years in the making, the lack of treatment options and police frustration at writing tickets for drug use that most ignore.

The encampment, along a vacant street grid near Interstate 84, is a known trouble spot, according to Ontario police Sgt. Jon Laurenson.

“People aren’t hiding it,” he said.

Laurenson, a former farm kid with more than a dozen years of experience in law enforcement, was perched in his police cruiser just outside the homeless camp because he thought the man slumped over in the cluttered SUV next to his girlfriend had a warrant for a carjacking.

When backup arrived, it turned out to be a case of mistaken identity. The man in the SUV wasn’t the suspect they sought on the felony robbery and assault warrant. And even though the couple readily admitted to drug use, the police officers and sheriff’s deputies left empty-handed.

Without evidence of a more serious crime, police have scant reason to investigate drug use that’s punishable by little more than a traffic ticket. A state hotline is supposed to connect those ticketed with free addiction services and a waiver of the fine, but state records show few bother to call.

“I have a hard time writing a citation for something that’s not going to help or do anything,” Laurenson said. “If the state’s not going to enforce it, why should we?”

Oregon’s outlier status when it comes to drug enforcement stands in stark contrast to Idaho, where marijuana, much less fentanyl, remains illegal. Ontario’s dozen-plus marijuana shops are filled with out-of-state plates from Idaho customers.

Across the Snake River, possession of street drugs or even paraphernalia can be punished by up to a year in jail — while in Oregon there is no punishment. Democratic lawmakers’ recriminalization proposal calls for a maximum punishment of 30 days in jail.

Ontario Police Chief Michael Iwai said he and other officers frequently learn of suspects’ connections to Idaho while out on patrol and anecdotally see the allure of Oregon’s more liberal culture, though his department doesn’t track that demographic data.

“You can see the draw for people to move nationwide over to Oregon because, hey, you get a slap on the wrist if you’re using hardcore drugs,” he said. “You do those same things in Idaho, you go to jail.”

Homelessness rises

The woman in the pink plastic shoes opened the flap of her tent just a hair.

Originally from Washington, the woman said she moved to Payette, Idaho, to take care of her dying mother. She started using opiates, moved six miles across the border into a trailer in Ontario, then lost that, too.

Now the woman, who declined to give her name, lives in a dome-shaped tent pitched in the one place she legally can — the rolling turf of a former gravel pit that serves as Ontario’s lone designated camping site.

“My first time sleeping on the ground it was so hard I cried myself to sleep,” she told The Oregonian/OregonLive in November. “Living like this right now, it’s embarrassing.”

The woman said she was three months’ sober and in treatment, but declined to name her provider, saying she’s struggled to pass drug tests after inhaling fumes from the rubbing alcohol she burns to stay warm.

Despite receiving treatment, the woman said her provider has been unable to find her a bed for a night in a traditional mass shelter or a longer stay in transitional housing.

The city of 10,000 has never offered a year-round shelter, but recently opened a 17-bed transitional housing site, offering stays of six months to a year, at a renovated apartment complex using a $4 million state grant.

Those efforts — alongside housing vouchers, sober living houses and a recently constructed affordable housing project — haven’t been enough to help everyone who needs it.

Instead, Ontario last year opened the designated campsite on 3-1/2 rolling acres surrounding a duck pond in response to federal court rulings that limit enforcement of bans on camping and sleeping in public places when no alternative shelter is available.

A bare-bones operation costing just $10,000 a year, the site offers no running water, heat or electricity — just a single portable bathroom and a 40-yard dumpster.

“Our goal, seriously, is not to make it super comfortable,” City Manager Dan Cummings said. “What we have created is a place for the true unhoused people that are sleeping downtown, to move them off the sidewalks.”

Oregon’s drug decriminalization law wasn’t designed to combat homelessness, which has been rising for years across the nation due to many factors, including pandemic instability, rising wage inequality and the disappearance of affordable housing as cities fail to build enough to keep up with population growth.

A recent survey of 468 drug users indicated only 9% had lived in Oregon for less than two years. The study, presented at a Measure 110 research symposium in Salem in January, didn’t poll anyone living in the counties that border Idaho.

Regardless, the surge of homelessness in Malheur County has led to finger-pointing from local leaders and residents who say Measure 110′s combined offerings of free services and lax drug laws draw people from Boise and its suburbs.

Countywide, the number of unsheltered people rose from 198 in 2019 to 292 in 2023, according to federally mandated Point In Time counts.

Preliminary data from the 2024 count shows more than 300 people living without shelter across the 31,000-person county, according to Priscilla Garcia, who oversees the federal survey for Community In Action, a local nonprofit.

Point In Time counts, which are conducted over a single day, are notorious for undercounts and Garcia said data for the 2020, 2021 and 2022 counts were either unavailable or unreliable due to pandemic disruptions.

The count disarray had an unintended consequence for Malheur County — because the Oregon Health Authority ended up using 2021 numbers as a crucial part of the funding formula for Measure 110. Malheur County ended up with a total initial two-year award of just $1.8 million.

Local housing experts agree that the homelessness is now far more visible than in years past.

“We haven’t seen such an influx of the houseless population in Malheur County like we’ve seen within the last few years,” said Kristy Rodriguez, director of the Housing Authority of Malheur & Harney County. “I do see a lot more people that have either mental health disorders or substance abuse disorders.”

Rodriguez said her agency provides more than 300 housing vouchers, operates 40 units of public housing scattered in homes and duplexes and manages six other multi-family properties for elderly people, farmworkers and others. All told, the housing authority is keeping a roof over the heads of 1,000 people across Malheur and Harney counties.

In a major lift for the county, Rodriguez noted that a 56-unit affordable housing complex called River Bend Place opened in Ontario in 2022.

None of the projects have been enough to reverse the trend of rising homelessness, leaving people like Bobby Lee Martin Jr. feeling that they have nowhere else to go.

Martin, 52, was stuck on the streets after the engine of the Dodge Caravan he shares with his partner and a small white dog died just a block from the new River Bend development.

Originally from St. Louis, Martin said he moved to Idaho to be with the mother of his child. She died in 2021, he said, the child was taken by the Idaho Department of Human Services and he ended up living and working at a local self-storage facility until the boss there died, too, and other employees kicked him out.

For a while, he parked in a gravel lot next to the Love’s Truck Stop near I-84, then left each morning for the parking lots of state recreation areas.

Despite the hassle of constantly moving around, Martin said as winter descended on eastern Oregon that life in Ontario was better than the alternative.

“I guess it’s against the law in Idaho to be homeless,” he said.

Missing treatment links

Annette Volk had high hopes.

The director of Altruistic Recovery, an outpatient behavioral health and addiction center in downtown Ontario, had watched eagerly as Measure 110 administrators announced hundreds of millions of dollars in funding opportunities after the law first passed.

Volk decided it was time for a moonshot.

“We were told, ‘We want the little guys to apply,’” she recalled.

Her organization ended up proposing to fill the void in Malheur County’s behavioral health system — the lack of a dedicated detox center — by creating one, with a complementary in-house residential drug rehabilitation program. The price tag: $15 million.

She filled out an application and months later watched as a subcommittee from the measure’s volunteer oversight council met over video to discuss her proposal. To her chagrin, the subcommittee pushed back the vote, then rejected the application after a few minutes’ discussion, citing the lack of detail in costs for administration and payroll. The decision was in line with a negative review by health authority staff.

Volk said she was disappointed the subcommittee’s structure didn’t allow her to present her ideas in person or provide more clarity, saying she felt the group ended up favoring the preexisting providers, including Lifeways, which was already reimbursed by Medicaid to provide addiction treatment.

“Measure 110 said they were going to help support treatment providers, and obviously it didn’t feel like that to us,” Volk said. “(You’re not) adding additional services to the community if you’re funding something that’s already funded.”

But no Measure 110 grant recipient casts a shadow in Malheur County like the red-steepled church of Origins Faith Community.

Originally contracted to provide a bevy of Measure 110 services such as housing, addiction treatment, harm reduction and supported employment — the nonprofit admitted last year that its primary service was actually a free food kitchen serving weekday meals to homeless people, according to health authority staffers.

Origins was late submitting required reports, and when accounts of expenditures did arrive, they didn’t add up, according to a staff presentation made to the Measure 110 oversight council.

“What they said they did, who they said they served and what they said they spent just didn’t match,” Kristen Donheffener, engagement and strategy manager for the Oregon Health Authority, told the council in September.

The council promptly voted to revoke the $616,000 grant. Tim Heider, a health authority spokesperson, said this month that the state agency is still “working in good faith” to recover the remaining $193,000 in unspent money. Heider said the decline in addiction treatment in Malheur County was partly due to Origins falling out of the program.

Origins didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The funding revocation left some homeless people going hungry.

“I don’t know what we’re going to do for another week. There’s no food now,” said Thomas Martinez, 59, who was living in his truck near Ontario’s Beck-Kiwanis Park.

With Origins out of the picture, Lifeways offers all seven categories of services funded by Measure 110, and is the sole provider of five of the categories. The nonprofit, which also runs a 30-bed residential drug rehab center, has been granted a total of $1.4 million over 36 months, following the approval of a contract extension, with the money going to everything from drug screening and treatment to housing and jobs.

Van Ausdal, the clinical director of outpatient services at Lifeways, said the organization wants to use Measure 110 funding to provide medical detox, but the proposal hasn’t been approved by the drug law’s oversight council yet.

While Lifeways hopes to do more, it’s currently providing less treatment because referrals from the county’s drug court have dropped significantly, Van Ausdal said.

“Measure 110, as intended, has not helped us,” he said. “Individuals continue to suffer because they don’t have a full gamut of care that the measure intended to provide them with.”

‘Getting clean’

When Amador Perez first started making the hourlong commute from Boise to Ontario, he said townsfolk knew him only as “the guy that gives needles away.”

Perez, a 23-year-old harm reduction specialist for the Eastern Oregon Center for Independent Living, said breaking down the stigma of addiction is part of the job — but so is saving lives. Providing clean needles prevents the spread of diseases like HIV and AIDS, he said.

“People are going to use no matter what. Let’s make sure they use in a safe manner,” said Perez. “That way, when they’re ready to recover, they can.”

Eastern Oregon Center for Independent Living was the third agency in Malheur County that received Measure 110 funding, some $864,000 over three years.

Part of the money went to help purchase a former union hall near the nonprofit’s office, which is being retrofitted into transitional housing. The units will be low barrier, meaning they’re open to people with addiction who are still using substances, said the center’s CEO, Kirt Tombs.

Another chunk of cash has allowed the center to provide the overdose-reversal medicine Narcan and exchange dirty needles for clean ones, which are distributed by Perez.

Perez said the lack of housing is the biggest barrier for people with addiction.

“What’s the point of getting clean,” he said, paraphrasing the words of campers. “What’s the point of recovery if I can’t find somewhere to live?’”

Jonathon Dunn and Diana De Lay know the struggle of waiting for housing first-hand.

Both born in different states, Dunn and De Lay met years ago in Ontario and stayed together while Dunn spent a few years in Snake River Correctional Institution, one of the county’s largest employers, on an assault conviction.

They were hoping to find a room in Eastern Oregon Center for Independent Living’s new supportive housing building when it opens in March. Several months ago, they were living in the center’s parking lot in the few square feet of Dunn’s sedan.

The front seat of their 2010 Hyundai Limited was serving as their kitchen, strewn with fast food wrappers and a half-eaten loaf of bread. As night fell and temperatures dipped into biting cold, the couple tried to make themselves comfortable, the only light cast by a phone playing videos of a Korean cooking show.

They cuddled “pretzel style” or took turns sleeping, one on the floor and one on the cushion of the back seat. The rear tinted windows were their only semblance of privacy. In the morning they were first in line for a shower.