The nonprofit Downtown Emergency Service Center got its start in 1979 running a homeless shelter in the second-story ballroom of the Morrison Hotel on the border of Pioneer Square and Downtown.
Seattle’s homeless residents could spend a night there, receiving a hot meal and sleeping on one of the 200 mats on the floor. DESC used the space as its main overnight shelter for 40 years and later opened 190 units of permanent supportive housing on the upper floors.
Then the COVID-19 pandemic led to the shelter’s closure as homelessness providers realized they could not safely keep people in crowded indoor shared spaces.
The second floor of the Morrison building reopened Thursday as DESC’s new Opioid Recovery and Care Access (ORCA) Center — a change that illustrates the evolution of homelessness services and the new challenges homeless residents often face.
Left: Daniel Malone, executive director of DESC, speaks at the opening of the new Downtown Behavioral Health Clinic and Opioid Recovery & Care Access (ORCA) Center. Right: An overdose recovery station at the Center. (Charissa Soriano for Cascade PBS)
The ORCA Center will provide space for overdose recovery, walk-in opioid treatment, counseling and connection to services and long-term care. The nonprofit also relocated its Downtown Behavioral Health Clinic to the space, which provides primary medical care and mental health treatment, among other services.
“In keeping with DESC’s value to accept people as they are, in whatever condition they are in, and for who they are, it’s fitting that what we’re celebrating today is a clinic that does just that,” said DESC executive director Dan Malone at the ORCA Center’s grand opening event.
ORCA Center will provide 24/7 post-overdose stabilization services for up to eight people at a time. Though individuals can check themselves in to the ORCA Center after overdosing, DESC medical director Dr. Richard Waters said it’s likely most clients will be brought there after Seattle Fire or another first responder helps them survive an overdose.
The recovery space has eight recliners where people can rest and recover for a maximum of 24 hours. It will be managed by at least four DESC staff who will offer clients basics like getting food or taking a shower, as well as administer medications to alleviate withdrawal symptoms such as nausea and anxiety.
Waters said staff will also offer information about other homelessness and housing services available from DESC and other providers, including longer-term substance-use disorder treatment, behavioral health counseling, shelter options and housing navigation.
In addition, the Center will be open from 9 a.m. to 11 p.m. every day for walk-in access to opioid-use disorder medications like buprenorphine and methadone; appointments with medical staff and peer-support specialists; and showers, snacks and laundry.
The Center is not a methadone clinic, however, so clients can only receive up to three days of methadone in accordance with federal regulations. From there they get connected to a provider like Evergreen Treatment Services to continue methadone.
DESC received a mix of city, county, state and federal funding along with private donations for construction and operations of the facility. The nonprofit is also relying on Medicaid reimbursements for operations costs, which could prove challenging after Congress’s $700 billion cut to Medicaid payments over the next decade.
Nicole Macri, DESC’s deputy director for strategy, said they made “fairly conservative assumptions” about Medicaid reimbursements for the ORCA Center budget, and thinks they will be fine in the short term. But in the longer term, Macri, who also represents Seattle in the Washington State House, expects Medicaid will be critical for the program’s sustainability.
King County’s opioid crisis has improved since its 2023 peak of 1,111 overdose deaths involving opioids. In 2024, that number fell to 841 deaths involving opioids, and has continued to decline this year.
In his remarks at Thursday’s grand opening, Mayor Bruce Harrell acknowledged the progress on overdose deaths and shared his optimism for what facilities like the ORCA Center could do to alleviate the crisis.
“Imagine the magic we can do now at this facility,” Harrell said. “Imagine how we can actually win. That’s what we’re here celebrating.”
First responders and city leaders have often expressed frustration at the lack of on-demand treatment options in Seattle for someone experiencing a mental health crisis or overdosing in public. Often the only choices were Harborview Medical Center or jail, both of which are overcrowded and insufficient for getting people longer-term help.
The ORCA Center aims to address that gap. King County also has new facilities in the works.
In 2023, King County voters approved a property tax levy to pay for the construction and operations of five Crisis Care Centers around the region meant to give first responders, family members and individuals on-demand access to help.
Those centers will provide triage services for people experiencing mental health or substance-use disorder crises; space for people to stay for up to 23 hours under observation; and beds for people to stay for up to 14 days before discharge or referral to other services.
The first of the five care centers opened in Kirkland this year. Seattle and King County announced plans in August to open a second center in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood.
On Thursday, officials lauded the new resources available to help people with substance-use disorder.
“The opening here really caps the significant progress that we have made to build the infrastructure and the response that we need to address the opioid overdose crisis,” said King County Executive Shannon Braddock.
