Austin committee seeks safeguards and reports on No Wrong Door crisis care program

The Austin City Council’s Public Health Committee approved three motions at its Oct. 7 meeting seeking more oversight of No Wrong Door, a crisis care program for people who repeatedly cycle through jail, hospitals and the streets.

The motions ask the city manager for quarterly outcome reports, a community advisory group and answers to safeguards proposed by the ACLU of Texas. They go to the full council as recommendations.

No Wrong Door links 17 organizations that have signed memorandums of understanding, including the city, Travis County, Integral Care and health care partners Ascension and St. David’s, staff said at an Oct. 6 council work session. It focuses on the 99 people who use those systems most.

The program has been fully running for only about 100 days, and two days of hearings showed a split. Staff reported fewer police contacts. Public defenders said police are approaching their clients without lawyers and collecting releases that let prosecutors see their records.

“Our clients should not have to risk their defense to receive care.”

David Gray, director of Austin Homeless Strategies and Operations, said the program came out of the city manager’s office. “No wrong door is not an APD-led initiative,” he said.

How does No Wrong Door work?

Robert Kingham, administrator of the Austin Community Court, led the Oct. 6 briefing. Mayor Pro Tem José “Chito” Vela (District 4) chaired the session while Mayor Kirk Watson was out of town.

Citing the Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute, Kingham said about 950 people in Travis County have both high needs and a high risk of justice involvement. Serving them costs about $144,000 a person a year, or $137 million a year in all, he said.

Gray described a client’s path. Before a hospital or jail releases someone on the list, staff call a partner to find the next bed or service. “We are not going to release Oscar to the street,” he said of a hypothetical client, adding that people can leave the program at any time.

Vela summed it up as coordination among existing providers: “We’re really talking about communication and coordination when we talk about No Wrong Door.”

The Austin Police Department’s chief of strategic initiatives said 40% of the top 99 have signed consent agreements. In preliminary figures covering about 90 days, she said, police or EMS crisis contacts fell from once every 11 days to once every 16, and police contacts dropped 31%.

She said the program’s officers volunteered and receive 40 hours of crisis intervention training. Staff said EMS will host biweekly case conferences and hold most of the program’s data going forward.

The briefing gave no separate city budget for No Wrong Door. Central Health said it will spend $127.5 million on crisis and recovery care in fiscal 2027, including $16 million toward a mental health crisis center that is about four years from opening once work begins.

What defenders and advocates said

Eleven people spoke Oct. 6. Defense lawyers, a physician and harm reduction and labor advocates raised concerns. The Downtown Austin Alliance, the Ending Community Homelessness Coalition, The Other Ones Foundation and Family Bridge backed the program.

Travis County’s mental health public defender, speaking for herself, said the program has kept the defense out of client staffings with providers and the prosecution. She objected to officers reading clients Miranda warnings, which she said could let statements be used against them.

Hargis told Council Member Mike Siegel (District 7) that an officer had asked a court the previous Thursday to release a client only to a No Wrong Door officer. The court refused, he said. He said there had been other bond requests, and described a person who was detained after a program lookout notice, searched and charged with a felony.

An internal medicine physician in the public safety net said the program uses eight or more arrests as a primary selection criterion. “Arrests measure police contact, not clinical need,” she said.

On Oct. 7, the public defender said the release clients sign runs four single-spaced pages and covers health, probation and court files shared with 17 organizations, including the prosecution.

An attorney director for the private defender service said the team flew one client to California for treatment under an arrangement with the prosecutor that the defense never heard about. Police later flew the client back, she said.

How staff responded

The police chief of strategic initiatives said the bond request was a single email sent to a judge by mistake. She said the lookout notice was meant to get a person into a waiting treatment bed, and that the person later got access to it.

Officers’ procedures now require them to try to notify attorneys before jail interviews, she said. Chris Coppola of the city law department said the agreement limits shared information to coordinating care and excludes psychotherapy notes. After talks with prosecutors, he said, the city kept Miranda warnings so people know their rights.

Gray said the Cicero Institute, a think tank advocates criticized, has no role in the program, though his office meets with it as it does with advocacy groups. Legislative Director Carrie Rogers said the city is not seeking to lower the legal threshold for involuntary commitment.

Council Member Krista Laine (District 6) called the eight-arrest cutoff reasonable but said pretrial diversion should be the goal. Council Member Marc Duchen (District 10) said “doing nothing is not the answer.”

What happens next?

Council Member José Velásquez (District 3) won approval, without objection, for legislative updates, a council sub-quorum on legislative goals and answers to the ACLU letter. His motion for a community advisory group passed with three votes; Vice Chair Duchen objected that it started from groups that signed the letter. Velásquez said the motion does not limit who can take part.

Council Member Vanessa Fuentes (District 2), the committee chair, won approval, without objection, for tracking outcomes such as housing and treatment, and for quarterly reports to the committee. The record does not say when the full council will take up the motions.

The committee next meets Wednesday, Nov. 4. On Oct. 6, Fuentes invited residents to send feedback on what outcomes the program should measure.

Siegel said that before the city files any bills, “we should be fully aware and we should be on board with any legal changes that we're seeking.”