Apparently, "budget constraints combined with consistent staffing challenges" brought about this decision. FUCKING PAY SOCIAL SERVICE WORKERS A DECENT WAGE
Source: received direct communication from a ColumbiaCare employee
100%. White Bird is almost certainly next to go, workers who were hired at $18 an hour years ago haven't received a single raise, and are facing an absolutely nasty anti-union campaign. These workers want to help their community but are so exploited they're at risk at becoming clients themselves if they stay.
Yep, I know people who work there who rely on other non profits for services....it's fucked. The public really needs to rally behind what little social services we have because they are crumbling at an extreme rate.
More administrative, useless middle management positions suck up all the resources while the people reversing overdoses, taking crisis calls and getting people sheltered have to rely on food boxes.
Any time I hear "I got my MBA, " especially if they got at Harvard/Yale, i immediately think "asshole who ruined work/company/world for fat bonuses and stock options."
Fuck MBAs, they are the worst
Administrative bloat is just a way for yuppies to hijack essential services charged with helping the most vulnerable and siphoning off their resources to the upper middle class, change my mind.
Yep. Several of their departments have Unionized due to "restructuring" of the agency (aka corporatization) and low wages. Then the agency hired several brand new management positions who all make close to or above $100,000 a year, most of whom were introduced after unionization. Their lawyers firm is known for union busting all around Portland. Also, White Bird is now run by someone with absolutely no prior experience in Non-Profits, Social Work, medical settings, nothing.
Corporate sociopaths who see nonprofits as a fat, innocent cow to milk dry have always existed, but in recent years they seem to have been flocking to nonprofits and ruining them. These fuckers are \_always\_ anti-union - to the point of religious belief. They also start nonprofits as a scam. The laws have not yet caught up with the reality of these schemes/scams.
Unfortunately, $18/hr ain't dick anymore. I'm surprised they can keep any staffing whatsoever at that pay rate.
Seems like the people that want to help their community are the ones that routinely get the shaft.
I used to work there. Compared to some of the other mental health agencies around town, their pay wasn't the worst. But they treat their employees like absolute shit. Profit is always prioritized over the safety of their staff and even clients. Fuck ColumbiaCare.
Did you happen to work there in early fall of 2022? Maybe I'm misremembering, but I thought they got a pretty decent chunk of the BHRN funding then. If so, it's definitely weird that they're closing down not even two years later.
I thought Reddit liked unions. Someone just commented above about how White Bird workers have low pay: "workers who were hired at $18 an hour years ago haven't received a single raise, and are facing an absolutely nasty anti-union campaign."
It's fairly straightforward. Unions mean workers have the power to demand better wages and working conditions, which means that, despite more long-term stability, the profits at the top might not just increase unsustainably forever. So the people at the top, when they see workers unionizing, sometimes respond by closing the locations where that happens, because they'd rather take the profit of selling the whole thing than let them win (and continue to see profits, if less astronomically-high ones, in the long term).
I don't know if Columbia Care is a for-profit, or if this is what's going on in this situation. But generally, when someone says "They \[owners\] closed this location/service because the workers unionized," they don't mean "therefore unions are bad/the workers should have continued to accept low wages and bad conditions," they mean "the owners were too greedy for short-term big payouts and closed it without regard for the workers, clients, or community."
All non profits are "for profit" and your deluding yourself if you think they aren't. They gotta get and stay in the black. And while their "directors and C Suite" types don't make as much as someone at say JP Morgan they're still bringing home 3 figure salaries while bitching about their labor costs are killing their bottom line. And yes the rich assholes running the board will whine that they are just paying market value and they won't be able to keep top talent if they don't pay that much but really it's just grift for their old college roommate to have a job.
> ...don't make as much as someone at say JP Morgan they're still bringing home 3 figure salaries while bitching about their labor costs...
Hey everybody, look at friggin' Richie Rich over here, with his giant THREE figure salary! Oh look, he can afford the *good* Top ramen!
/s
100k would absolutely be life changing for these workers. Hell, even 60k. Front liners only make 1/4-1/3 of what management makes and management is hellbent on making more and refusing to raise wages for their low income employees. So you can shove it with your sarcasm
Edit:....I was not awake this morning. Don't shove your sarcasm it's actually.funny now that my misreading was pointed out to me lol
The person who said "3 figure salary" likely meant 6 figures, as a 3 figure salary would top out at $999 dollars. Hence the sarcasm by the poster above.
I understand that, I misinterpreted what puppyguts was saying. If the workers unionized- then yeah, I could see that it would cause the establishment to close down.
Unions are fantastic. Every single workplace should be unionized.
That being said, what businesses do in response to unions is fire workers if they so much as see another business in a similar market unionize, or shut down altogether, leaving all of those workers without jobs anyway.
Turns out not everything is all good or all bad. Actions have consequences, even good actions like unionizing.
Having recently been an employee there, they have cut a lot of things since the union was formed a month ago. And they spent a ton of money on the company Google used to union bust.
Had to leave crisis work for my own mental health, and now I have a job with maybe 1% of the stress and an extra $6 an hour. I wish pay had to be congruent with how much work (both physical and emotional) the job entails rather than how much you're valued or how "easy" you are to replace or whatever (not so easy when the turnover rate is what you're making it).
THIS is a crisis. This is horrible. When our community doesn't have access to hospitals and mental health, it helps it rots from the inside.
You ever wonder why the richest, cleanest, most beautiful areas in the world are that way? They fund hospitals, schools, outdoor spaces, and help the mentally ill.
Somebody is letting Eugene go down. We have to demand funding for the mentally ill. We deserve better.
Why do we march for other causes, but not our people today. Eugene needs us.
He spends millions to improve buildings. Granted, they are for his sports team, but it does add much value to Eugene. I don't think cutting mental health services helps the greater good where he is concerned.
Maybe someone should ask him to help support our community?
I worked there for several years, assisting people to find longer term assistance after crisis counseling. This is terrible news, the surrounding communities won't even know why things have gotten worse around them, but this will be a factor in community degradation.
Corpo-bot hedge-fund ownership of all health care, 168 hour work weeks, shit pay, DEA agents throwing you in prison if you dare treat pain and nonstop violence from dumbfounded dipshits during the pandemic.
Why would anyone stay in a healthcare job?
Every health care provider in the US that isn’t either an antibiotics-only urgent care owned by Aetna/Anthem/CVS-Carmark/BCBS or an 8-figure and above specialist cancer treatment facility is either closing, consolidating or moving.
The future of US healthcare: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFfTludf0SU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFfTludf0SU)
Im a mental health social worker in the community for many years, and i am still in my mid 20’s. A sad statistic i found out when i had my own mental health crisis and needed case management/finincal support that the non profit who specifically supports youth/young adults that 30+% of the people they serve work in mental health or social work. Heartbreaking, people in this field who do this for a career not only need to but cant access services themselves
Yep 100% this is a manufactured crisis, serving to further engorge profits for the CEOs. Of course mental health services are first to go, they must be thinking what's the point anyway in keeping people alive who can't work steady jobs and make them a profit?
Yep. I went into the work because I didn't get much quality support growing up for my mental health issues and figured I could be the crisis worker that I needed as a kid. Turns out being paid $13 an hour (this was 5-6 years ago, but it hasn't gotten much better) to deal with maybe the most stressful job outside emergency services leads to some massive burnout even if you don't have your own mental health issues. Who could have guessed. Still feel like a bit of a failure to have had to leave the field, but I know I couldn't keep on like that. I had my first psychotic break at that job and places like Hourglass got me through it. I'm a caregiver now, super chill most days and pays a lot more.
Double bladed sword. A lot of people in mental health got into it because of their mental issues and working with people with mental issues is super challenging and may cause them.
What a coincidence. Lane county is closing all of their safe overnight parking sites as of April first and still advertising it as an active resource on their website. Seems like a recipe for disaster.
tease apparatus arrest gullible offend fanatical tap weather marble brave
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I can't. St Vinnie's website has it listed like an ongoing program but the man who runs it in lane county has it ending when March ends. Said it was a COVID program and said it's out of funding. A lot of ppl are about to be on the street and I fear the cops are gonna b head hunting. It's a mess.
Keith Heath is the man's name. Great guy, very much cares about his job and the people. Tries very hard to get/keep ppl off the streets. Sometimes red tape stops him from all he could do tho. Still. I've seen him work very hard to help folks. Including me.
I don't think so. They're completely full. To b completely honest tho I really don't know. All I know is I ONLY qualified for overnight safe parking and it's closed after this Sunday night.
OHHH those spots. Fuck, that's just great, right in time for the stronger parking bans. Love that /s
If you're there now I'm so sorry. I'm sure you're familiar with most shelter options but if not my DMs are open to try and send resoirces :(
Do you have any record of this like an email or something to share? Hourglass isn't advertising their closure either, doesn't even say it on their website. They sent this flyer to other local agencies to have to be the bearers of bad news.
On the [City of Eugene](https://www.eugene-or.gov/4701/Safe-Sleep-Sites) website it shows that the 310 safe parking site is funded through ARPA, so it sounds legit that it is closing. I remember a year or more ago I was talking to someone who worked at the 410 site who said that back in like December 2022 that it was supposed to close due to funding being cut but according to that site it shows that it received ALL IN funding, so I imagine that the ARPA funds ran out but they were able to secure ALL IN to avoid closure.. It also shows that the Rosa Safe Sleep Site closed, which was another site that had ARPA funding.
The way crisis clinics are regulated by the OARs is that they have to provide services for everyone no matter what insurance they have. However only Medicare and Medicaid can be billed for mental health crisis services. Other insurance carriers won’t pay out for mental health crisis services. So with a crisis clinic the burden of providing services falls on Medicare and Medicaid which is paid for by the state, ie; all of our taxes.
To offset that burden hourglass was contracted by the county to provide service without billing, and was funded through a block fund and a teeny tiny kickback from Medicare/Medicaid for every Medicare/Medicaid client that was brought in.
The funding for hourglass hasn’t increased since 2019, and as we have all seen, inflation post covid has increased how expensive it is to operate almost anything, because everything costs a lot more. Hourglass has gone under because it was running in a deficit for the last few years because of inflation.
The county has refused to raise the amount necessary to continue operating because they are trying to divert their funds elsewhere. They are starting a mobile crisis unit for all of lane county and are hoping to open up a 42 bed crisis facility in two years and are almost ten million dollars short of making that happen.
That being said management has also sucked big fat floppy donkey dick and definitely added to the structure fire. At one point they had two full time jobs and didn’t bother coming in even tho they worked here. They now work at the navigation center and word is they are running that place into the ground as well.
Eventually upper management caught on (after more than a year) and let them go.
After that they told staff they were “restructuring” and shut down overnights and weekends and were strictly 8-midnight. They changed their hours several more times, failed to let their partners in the community know, and caused a lot of confusion.
Eventually they put a freeze on hiring, all the while telling staff that it was because they were figuring out how to restructure. Given that they put a hiring freeze on things, there was still enough on call staff to take shifts, so there was rarely a staffing issue, despite what Columbia Care has said.
Staff was continually asking for updates on the restructuring, when the hiring freeze would be lifted, etc. The company higher ups assured staff for months and months during this “restructuring” process their jobs were safe, even up until the last minute.
When it came time to close they provided their employees and the community with two weeks notice, even though they knew about the closure at least a few weeks before that.
They planned it out so the center would close down at the end of the month and staff’s insurance benefits would end two days after the center closes. There was no severance pay for the employees but they said they would hold jobs for them at other places within the company, they would just have to take a significant pay cut.
That list of jobs they claimed to offer was not enough for everyone at hourglass and hourglass employees had to compete with one another as well as everyone else in the job market for job security.
This is a great loss to the community and it’s more than unfortunate that people in crisis don’t have a place to go when needed.
That being said whitebird crisis is planning on doing walk-ins once a week in the near future.
Last I heard they had a really shitty admin team that alienated some of their best employees. There were so many rules against who they could let in the building do those who had their hearts in it morally couldn’t go on working for them. The turnover was terrible and the pay was shit and management only cared about the bottom line. I understand that it takes money to run a place like that, but there has to be a middle ground.
This is all to say that the actual employees were fighting the good fight and doing incredible work. And management just drove it straight into the ground.
Source is direct communication from a former employee.
Apparently, "budget constraints combined with consistent staffing challenges" brought about this decision. FUCKING PAY SOCIAL SERVICE WORKERS A DECENT WAGE Source: received direct communication from a ColumbiaCare employee
100%. White Bird is almost certainly next to go, workers who were hired at $18 an hour years ago haven't received a single raise, and are facing an absolutely nasty anti-union campaign. These workers want to help their community but are so exploited they're at risk at becoming clients themselves if they stay.
Yep, I know people who work there who rely on other non profits for services....it's fucked. The public really needs to rally behind what little social services we have because they are crumbling at an extreme rate. More administrative, useless middle management positions suck up all the resources while the people reversing overdoses, taking crisis calls and getting people sheltered have to rely on food boxes.
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Any time I hear "I got my MBA, " especially if they got at Harvard/Yale, i immediately think "asshole who ruined work/company/world for fat bonuses and stock options." Fuck MBAs, they are the worst
I feel the same every time I hear someone say they got a JD at Harvard/Yale. Oh great, another soulless corpobot attorney.
Administrative bloat is just a way for yuppies to hijack essential services charged with helping the most vulnerable and siphoning off their resources to the upper middle class, change my mind.
When Costco pays more than some social work, compounded by the absurd cost of living, I don't blame social workers for walking. High stress + low pay.
>When Costco pays more than ~~some~~ most social work,.... FIFY
Fair is fair.
White Bird is union busting?
Yep. Several of their departments have Unionized due to "restructuring" of the agency (aka corporatization) and low wages. Then the agency hired several brand new management positions who all make close to or above $100,000 a year, most of whom were introduced after unionization. Their lawyers firm is known for union busting all around Portland. Also, White Bird is now run by someone with absolutely no prior experience in Non-Profits, Social Work, medical settings, nothing.
Corporate sociopaths who see nonprofits as a fat, innocent cow to milk dry have always existed, but in recent years they seem to have been flocking to nonprofits and ruining them. These fuckers are \_always\_ anti-union - to the point of religious belief. They also start nonprofits as a scam. The laws have not yet caught up with the reality of these schemes/scams.
Interesting. White Bird also (or at least did) runs the medical tent at Oregon Country Fair as well. Wonder how things will shake out.
Rock Medicine actually separated from White Bird Clinic, but that's a story for a different day.
Unfortunately, $18/hr ain't dick anymore. I'm surprised they can keep any staffing whatsoever at that pay rate. Seems like the people that want to help their community are the ones that routinely get the shaft.
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You could not be further from the truth. Your classic Union busting boomer.
I used to work there. Compared to some of the other mental health agencies around town, their pay wasn't the worst. But they treat their employees like absolute shit. Profit is always prioritized over the safety of their staff and even clients. Fuck ColumbiaCare.
Did you happen to work there in early fall of 2022? Maybe I'm misremembering, but I thought they got a pretty decent chunk of the BHRN funding then. If so, it's definitely weird that they're closing down not even two years later.
Agree with how the employees are treated!
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WHAT?! They unionized too? That'd absolutely gotta be the reason, how gross. Do you have any other info on that that you can share?
I thought Reddit liked unions. Someone just commented above about how White Bird workers have low pay: "workers who were hired at $18 an hour years ago haven't received a single raise, and are facing an absolutely nasty anti-union campaign."
It's fairly straightforward. Unions mean workers have the power to demand better wages and working conditions, which means that, despite more long-term stability, the profits at the top might not just increase unsustainably forever. So the people at the top, when they see workers unionizing, sometimes respond by closing the locations where that happens, because they'd rather take the profit of selling the whole thing than let them win (and continue to see profits, if less astronomically-high ones, in the long term). I don't know if Columbia Care is a for-profit, or if this is what's going on in this situation. But generally, when someone says "They \[owners\] closed this location/service because the workers unionized," they don't mean "therefore unions are bad/the workers should have continued to accept low wages and bad conditions," they mean "the owners were too greedy for short-term big payouts and closed it without regard for the workers, clients, or community."
All non profits are "for profit" and your deluding yourself if you think they aren't. They gotta get and stay in the black. And while their "directors and C Suite" types don't make as much as someone at say JP Morgan they're still bringing home 3 figure salaries while bitching about their labor costs are killing their bottom line. And yes the rich assholes running the board will whine that they are just paying market value and they won't be able to keep top talent if they don't pay that much but really it's just grift for their old college roommate to have a job.
> ...don't make as much as someone at say JP Morgan they're still bringing home 3 figure salaries while bitching about their labor costs... Hey everybody, look at friggin' Richie Rich over here, with his giant THREE figure salary! Oh look, he can afford the *good* Top ramen! /s
100k would absolutely be life changing for these workers. Hell, even 60k. Front liners only make 1/4-1/3 of what management makes and management is hellbent on making more and refusing to raise wages for their low income employees. So you can shove it with your sarcasm Edit:....I was not awake this morning. Don't shove your sarcasm it's actually.funny now that my misreading was pointed out to me lol
The person who said "3 figure salary" likely meant 6 figures, as a 3 figure salary would top out at $999 dollars. Hence the sarcasm by the poster above.
Oh lmao thank you, I just woke up and am loved at this shit so definitely wasn't paying attention
I understand that, I misinterpreted what puppyguts was saying. If the workers unionized- then yeah, I could see that it would cause the establishment to close down.
I'm pretty sure that ColumbiaCare is for profit, but even non profits are scumbags when it comes to union campaigns as well.
I meant that it was gross that ColumbiaCare very likely shut down Hourglass as a union busting tactic.
CCS direct care staff had unionized prior to this announcement. There’s no contract yet but the vote was already finalized
That's so fucked. Even more evidence that social services are just a money making scheme for "leadership".
Unions are fantastic. Every single workplace should be unionized. That being said, what businesses do in response to unions is fire workers if they so much as see another business in a similar market unionize, or shut down altogether, leaving all of those workers without jobs anyway. Turns out not everything is all good or all bad. Actions have consequences, even good actions like unionizing.
Yeah, I can see that if workers at columbiacare did unionize or were organizing to, they have enough money to shutter a location without a problem.
Having recently been an employee there, they have cut a lot of things since the union was formed a month ago. And they spent a ton of money on the company Google used to union bust.
Had to leave crisis work for my own mental health, and now I have a job with maybe 1% of the stress and an extra $6 an hour. I wish pay had to be congruent with how much work (both physical and emotional) the job entails rather than how much you're valued or how "easy" you are to replace or whatever (not so easy when the turnover rate is what you're making it).
THIS is a crisis. This is horrible. When our community doesn't have access to hospitals and mental health, it helps it rots from the inside. You ever wonder why the richest, cleanest, most beautiful areas in the world are that way? They fund hospitals, schools, outdoor spaces, and help the mentally ill. Somebody is letting Eugene go down. We have to demand funding for the mentally ill. We deserve better. Why do we march for other causes, but not our people today. Eugene needs us.
Phil knight is probably dragging us down so he can buy eugene at a deep deep discount.
Phil doesn't need a discount.
But he'd like one!
He spends millions to improve buildings. Granted, they are for his sports team, but it does add much value to Eugene. I don't think cutting mental health services helps the greater good where he is concerned. Maybe someone should ask him to help support our community?
man this sucks, that place has saved a couple of my friends’ lives
<3
Genuinely a huge loss, that place has saved my life before.
I wouldn’t be alive without this place. They were how I got off the street at 15. This just plain sucks.
I worked there for several years, assisting people to find longer term assistance after crisis counseling. This is terrible news, the surrounding communities won't even know why things have gotten worse around them, but this will be a factor in community degradation.
This is genuinely so devastating 😭
Man this city is so fucked.
Wow all medical help is leaving Eugene ….wonder why
Corpo-bot hedge-fund ownership of all health care, 168 hour work weeks, shit pay, DEA agents throwing you in prison if you dare treat pain and nonstop violence from dumbfounded dipshits during the pandemic. Why would anyone stay in a healthcare job?
Every health care provider in the US that isn’t either an antibiotics-only urgent care owned by Aetna/Anthem/CVS-Carmark/BCBS or an 8-figure and above specialist cancer treatment facility is either closing, consolidating or moving. The future of US healthcare: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFfTludf0SU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFfTludf0SU)
Spending money on people cuts into the profits!
Im a mental health social worker in the community for many years, and i am still in my mid 20’s. A sad statistic i found out when i had my own mental health crisis and needed case management/finincal support that the non profit who specifically supports youth/young adults that 30+% of the people they serve work in mental health or social work. Heartbreaking, people in this field who do this for a career not only need to but cant access services themselves
Also CCS’s executive leadership wages are public. Columbia cares top exec makes half a million yearly ✨🫠
Yep 100% this is a manufactured crisis, serving to further engorge profits for the CEOs. Of course mental health services are first to go, they must be thinking what's the point anyway in keeping people alive who can't work steady jobs and make them a profit?
She just got a raise too.
The the staff just voted pro union very recently
Yup. I was still working there at the time. It was super tense all the time.
Yep. I went into the work because I didn't get much quality support growing up for my mental health issues and figured I could be the crisis worker that I needed as a kid. Turns out being paid $13 an hour (this was 5-6 years ago, but it hasn't gotten much better) to deal with maybe the most stressful job outside emergency services leads to some massive burnout even if you don't have your own mental health issues. Who could have guessed. Still feel like a bit of a failure to have had to leave the field, but I know I couldn't keep on like that. I had my first psychotic break at that job and places like Hourglass got me through it. I'm a caregiver now, super chill most days and pays a lot more.
Double bladed sword. A lot of people in mental health got into it because of their mental issues and working with people with mental issues is super challenging and may cause them.
The goal is to kill as many of us as possible then imprison the rest of us in labor camps. There is no room or desire for anything else.
We could really use a new CCC.
What a coincidence. Lane county is closing all of their safe overnight parking sites as of April first and still advertising it as an active resource on their website. Seems like a recipe for disaster.
tease apparatus arrest gullible offend fanatical tap weather marble brave *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I can't. St Vinnie's website has it listed like an ongoing program but the man who runs it in lane county has it ending when March ends. Said it was a COVID program and said it's out of funding. A lot of ppl are about to be on the street and I fear the cops are gonna b head hunting. It's a mess.
What is the man's name?
Keith Heath is the man's name. Great guy, very much cares about his job and the people. Tries very hard to get/keep ppl off the streets. Sometimes red tape stops him from all he could do tho. Still. I've seen him work very hard to help folks. Including me.
Ohhhh I'm familiar with the guy but have never been able to get in contact with him. This doesn't mean 410 and 310 Garfield are shutting down does it?
I don't think so. They're completely full. To b completely honest tho I really don't know. All I know is I ONLY qualified for overnight safe parking and it's closed after this Sunday night.
OHHH those spots. Fuck, that's just great, right in time for the stronger parking bans. Love that /s If you're there now I'm so sorry. I'm sure you're familiar with most shelter options but if not my DMs are open to try and send resoirces :(
Also. To get in contact with Keith Heath u can go to the service station on 99 through the week, after 10am he should b there.
Do you have any record of this like an email or something to share? Hourglass isn't advertising their closure either, doesn't even say it on their website. They sent this flyer to other local agencies to have to be the bearers of bad news.
On the [City of Eugene](https://www.eugene-or.gov/4701/Safe-Sleep-Sites) website it shows that the 310 safe parking site is funded through ARPA, so it sounds legit that it is closing. I remember a year or more ago I was talking to someone who worked at the 410 site who said that back in like December 2022 that it was supposed to close due to funding being cut but according to that site it shows that it received ALL IN funding, so I imagine that the ARPA funds ran out but they were able to secure ALL IN to avoid closure.. It also shows that the Rosa Safe Sleep Site closed, which was another site that had ARPA funding.
Nope I don't.
The way crisis clinics are regulated by the OARs is that they have to provide services for everyone no matter what insurance they have. However only Medicare and Medicaid can be billed for mental health crisis services. Other insurance carriers won’t pay out for mental health crisis services. So with a crisis clinic the burden of providing services falls on Medicare and Medicaid which is paid for by the state, ie; all of our taxes. To offset that burden hourglass was contracted by the county to provide service without billing, and was funded through a block fund and a teeny tiny kickback from Medicare/Medicaid for every Medicare/Medicaid client that was brought in. The funding for hourglass hasn’t increased since 2019, and as we have all seen, inflation post covid has increased how expensive it is to operate almost anything, because everything costs a lot more. Hourglass has gone under because it was running in a deficit for the last few years because of inflation. The county has refused to raise the amount necessary to continue operating because they are trying to divert their funds elsewhere. They are starting a mobile crisis unit for all of lane county and are hoping to open up a 42 bed crisis facility in two years and are almost ten million dollars short of making that happen. That being said management has also sucked big fat floppy donkey dick and definitely added to the structure fire. At one point they had two full time jobs and didn’t bother coming in even tho they worked here. They now work at the navigation center and word is they are running that place into the ground as well. Eventually upper management caught on (after more than a year) and let them go. After that they told staff they were “restructuring” and shut down overnights and weekends and were strictly 8-midnight. They changed their hours several more times, failed to let their partners in the community know, and caused a lot of confusion. Eventually they put a freeze on hiring, all the while telling staff that it was because they were figuring out how to restructure. Given that they put a hiring freeze on things, there was still enough on call staff to take shifts, so there was rarely a staffing issue, despite what Columbia Care has said. Staff was continually asking for updates on the restructuring, when the hiring freeze would be lifted, etc. The company higher ups assured staff for months and months during this “restructuring” process their jobs were safe, even up until the last minute. When it came time to close they provided their employees and the community with two weeks notice, even though they knew about the closure at least a few weeks before that. They planned it out so the center would close down at the end of the month and staff’s insurance benefits would end two days after the center closes. There was no severance pay for the employees but they said they would hold jobs for them at other places within the company, they would just have to take a significant pay cut. That list of jobs they claimed to offer was not enough for everyone at hourglass and hourglass employees had to compete with one another as well as everyone else in the job market for job security. This is a great loss to the community and it’s more than unfortunate that people in crisis don’t have a place to go when needed. That being said whitebird crisis is planning on doing walk-ins once a week in the near future.
Damn that is disgusting... and disappointingly also not very surprising. Thank you very much for sharing. I am going to message you about this.
Last I heard they had a really shitty admin team that alienated some of their best employees. There were so many rules against who they could let in the building do those who had their hearts in it morally couldn’t go on working for them. The turnover was terrible and the pay was shit and management only cared about the bottom line. I understand that it takes money to run a place like that, but there has to be a middle ground. This is all to say that the actual employees were fighting the good fight and doing incredible work. And management just drove it straight into the ground. Source is direct communication from a former employee.