Opinion: The challenges of getting the Brockmann mental health facility open

A $42 million, 48-bed mental health campus near WSU Vancouver was completed in 2025 but never opened due to lack of state funding. Photo courtesy www.dshs.wa.gov

🎧 Brockmann’s $42M Mental Health Facility Sits Empty

Rep. John Ley says that ‘moving at the speed of bureaucracy isn’t working’

Rep. John Ley
18th Legislative District

A year ago, Clark County and Southwest Washington were supposed to be celebrating the opening of the Brockmann Campus, just north of WSU Vancouver. One can imagine Gov. Bob Ferguson and local elected officials at the ribbon cutting of the 48-bed mental health facility. Instead, a chain link fence was placed around the $42 million facility and it remains closed.

Rep. John Ley

What happened?

For over a decade, citizens have been fighting to increase mental health treatment facilities in Washington state.

Eight years ago, according to a news report, former Gov. Jay Inslee set a 2023 deadline to stop sending civil mental health patients to Western State Hospital as well as Eastern State Hospital near Spokane. Instead, the governor proposed to build a dozen new 16-bed mini-hospitals across the state to treat civil commitment patients. Western and Eastern State Hospitals would instead be reserved for forensic patients, many of whom are languishing in jails awaiting services to evaluate or restore their competency to stand trial.

In 2021 the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) purchased the 19-acre Brockmann family property to serve as a community-based mental health treatment site. After a localized planning and design process, construction on the $42 million, zero-net-energy campus officially kicked off in 2023.

Three 16-bed cottages were constructed with “modern, trauma-informed, therapeutic environments designed to blend into the surrounding nature”. Although construction was completed in 2025, the facility never opened. The Washington State Legislature opted to not fund operations, instead providing $600,000 for a 2-year “warm closure” (maintenance and security) rather than clinical care.

In the year that followed, legislators and concerned citizens toured the facility. A representative of United Health Services (UHS) joined them, noting the Brockmann facility was “first class”. He expressed immediate interest in a possible public-private partnership, to get the facility open.

A Dec. 2025 meeting was held in Olympia including David Frockt, the governor’s Deputy Policy Director Healthcare, Housing, Public Safety and leadership of DSHS. A public-private partnership was discussed as a means to get Brockmann open, treating patients. The various officials were open to the idea, but also wanted to see if the legislature would provide the roughly $39 million annual funding in the 2026 session for DSHS employees to operate the facility.

By the end of February 2026, it was apparent the majority party was not going to provide funding. Another meeting was held with numerous legislators and top DSHS leadership and Frockt. UHS could get the facility opened by the end of 2026, if the government was willing to enter a public-private partnership.

“How can we get to yes” to get the facility opened, was my simple question. No answer was forthcoming.

Later in the spring, DSHS announced a plan to hold four listening sessions before the end of September when the department must submit their budget request to the Governor. They remain non-committal regarding a public-private partnership with any private firm.

In May, a group of about 20 concerned citizens toured the facility as part of the first listening session. These included Lifeline Connections, Madrona Recovery, Columbia River Mental Health Services.

“A number brought up gaps in the system, such as treatment centers for young adults (not children or teenagers), and “step down” facilities after an individual is released from an urgent care facility,” said Ann Donnelly. “The most common complaint was the scarcity of local treatment facilities, and the urgent need for Brockmann to open to begin filling the need. Virtually unanimously was the need for civil as well as criminal patients to be treated in a customized variety of levels of care.”

Donnelly said there was a sense of urgency to begin taking action on Brockmann while those listening sessions were taking place. “We discussed the possibility of a public private partnership to provide for the funds and operating processes for Brockmann,” she said. “Brockmann was identified as emblematic of the inadequate planning and funding for Washington’s mental health treatment.”

Kim Schneiderman is Executive Director of the SW Washington NAMI, and is frustrated. “The state has seriously let down the 1 in 5 people living in Washington with mental health challenges and the people who care about them,” she said. “Our jails and prisons have many in them who could have avoided that trauma if proper supports were available in our state. When people are sick, they deserve a safe place to recover.

“Getting Brockman open will not fix the systemic issues that Washington has, but it will allow people to have a safe, therapeutic setting in place of incarceration,” she continued. “We are all paying for people dealing with serious mental illnesses. The question is, how do we want the money spent?”

Jerri Clark is another community advocate for mental health. She sent me the following statement.

“Our families supported the state from the beginning stages of Brockmann, including by showing up to help the public understand why this facility is so needed and to stop the “not in my backyard” (NIMBY) opposition that was making it difficult for the state to secure a site to build this inpatient facility,” she said. “We were promised a compassionate place for our loved ones with psychotic conditions to receive evidence-based, compassionate care, to slow their cycling through incarcerations, homelessness, and suicide attempts.”

“Civil commitment is often the tool that prevents criminalization, and usage of this facility for civil commitment was promised to us from the beginning. Litigation related to competency restoration services (Trueblood) shifted the state’s intentions, leading to a change in use for Brockmann to serve people far downstream, those who are so sick that the state cannot restore them to competency and legally adjudicate them for crimes committed during psychotic episodes.

“Now the state says it cannot afford to open this facility for even that purpose. We want accountability for the use of our taxpayer dollars, and we want accountability for state services that are abandoning our loved ones with the most severe and persistent psychiatric conditions—leaving them to go to prison, live on the streets, and/or die young. Brockmann is a facility that will stop this inhumane churn for a few dozen souls, and it’s unconscionable to have it sitting there empty while people suffer and die.”

With May being Mental Health Awareness Month, it’s time for action by our DSHS. The current budget outlook is not good for any state agency to add new employees or departments. Therefore, a public private partnership that gets Brockmann open and treating patients is the quickest way to provide for the treatment of people in mental health crisis.

Moving at the speed of bureaucracy isn’t working. Local families have tried being patient. But there is a cost to these delays and “planning”. Sadly, that cost includes the death of loved ones, or incarceration of people who could have benefited if treatment had been received earlier.

Let’s get Brockmann open now!

Rep. John Ley says that ‘moving at the speed of bureaucracy isn’t working’

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