TRAVIS COUNTY, Texas — Establishing a Mental Health Diversion Center has long been a priority for Travis County Judge Andy Brown.
And there’s a chance construction might finally begin in 2025.
The Mental Health Diversion Center is a place where those facing a mental health crisis would go instead of jail.
That, in turn, would ease the burden on the county jail, which still houses a large number of people with unmet mental health needs who are waiting for beds to open in the Texas state hospital system.
“When people get arrested, the police here in Austin and Travis County and the Sheriff’s Department will have one place to take people,” Judge Brown told us on Inside Texas Politics. “They don’t need to know if they’re getting diverted to treatment, or if they’re being arrested necessarily, they just know that there’s one door where they can take them.”
Judge Brown says funding has been set aside at the county level.
They want to locate the center on the campus of the Austin State Hospital off Guadalupe Street, but lawmakers would have to pass a bill allowing it.
Nothing can happen until then, so Judge Brown is hopeful construction will start soon after the legislative session ends next year.
Judge Brown is also excited about affordable childcare in 2025.
Travis County became the first county in Texas and one of the first in the nation to pass an affordable childcare initiative on the November ballot.
Judge Brown says the slight tax increase will help eliminate childcare wait lists for parents looking to return to the workforce.
“That’s a several thousand person waitlist. It is about a 24-month wait list for people here in Travis County currently,” the Judge said.
Travis County voters saw the need and passed the measure with nearly 60% of the vote.
Year one funding starts in January 2025.
While Judge Brown says it will help the economy in the short term, long-term benefits include reduced medical costs and better high school graduation rates.
“And in the second year of it, our hope is to help new providers pop up, especially in places in Travis County where there are childcare deserts to make sure our economy can continue to flourish, that people who want to enter that workforce can do so and know that their kids have great, high-quality childcare,” said Brown.