Downtown Portland Gets 50 New Drug Treatment Beds

The Oregon Change Clinic is moving its headquarters to Portland’s West End.

State Rep. Shannon Jones Isadore. (Whitney McPhie)
By Lucas Manfield

The Oregon Change Clinic, the drug and mental health nonprofit founded by state Rep. Shannon Jones Isadore (D-Northwest Portland), is moving its headquarters to Portland’s West End with plans to add 50 drug treatment beds.

The clinic currently operates 37 beds at a converted motel in the Lloyd District and is now taking over an unused building across the street from the Crystal Ballroom that was abandoned two years ago by Fora, another treatment provider.

Jones Isadore, who was recently appointed to her seat in the Oregon House of Representatives, says she’s renovating the first-floor clinic and converting the upper two floors into housing for clients who’ve recently sobered up. (Disclosure: WW is endorsing her bid to retain that seat in the Nov. 5 election.)

The project is funded by a combination of state and county grants.

“I’m quite excited,” Jones Isadore says. With the state’s new “deflection” policies to push people caught using illicit drugs into treatment, “our services will be needed even more so,” she adds.

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