PALM BEACH COUNTY, Fla. — All Ladi Goldwire needed was a place for her son to go.
She said her son, Donel Elam, was diagnosed in college with schizoaffective disorder and declared disabled in 2014. Through tears, Goldwire told the Palm Beach County Board of Commissioners that Donel, who will soon be 30 years old, had already exhausted his lifetime psychiatric care benefits through Social Security. He had been hospitalized 87 times under the Baker Act, she said.
By the holidays, Goldwire said she was out of options for Donel, and told commissioners she "got creative."
"The resources weren't here in Palm Beach County, and so I took him up to St. Lucie County and I knew that he would make some critical missteps, but it would get him into prison or jail so that he could benefit from the mental health services that they have at the St. Lucie County Jail," Goldwire said. "You can't imagine the guilt of doing something like that just to try and come up with a solution."
Donel is currently being held on a criminal mischief charge.
His mother was one of more than a dozen people who voiced support Tuesday for the board to help fund a central receiving facility for people experiencing mental health crises.
The facility would be run by the Health Care District of Palm Beach County, which will also fund the rest of the project.
Darcy Davis, president and CEO of the Health Care District, expects to spend another $60 million building the facility and $30 million per year operating it.
"That's not a small lift," Davis said. "This is a pretty intricate, complex infrastructure we're talking about building."
Davis said the district is considering two locations for the facility: the site of the The Edward J. Healey Rehabilitation and Nursing Center in Riviera Beach, which the district already owns; and an undeveloped site on the north side of Southern Boulevard in unincorporated Palm Beach County. The district would need to buy that land from a private owner if they choose to build there.
This proposal was years in the making, Davis said, amid a deepening mental health crisis in Palm Beach County.
The void only grew when the Jerome Golden Center for Behavioral Health abruptly closed in 2019. And this past November, JFK North Hospital said it would no longer accept Baker Act patients ages 12 and under.
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Soon this group can no longer be held under Baker Act in Palm Beach Co.
Davis said the goal is to provide a broad range of wraparound services that would reduce the need to rely on the Baker Act, which involuntarily held 5,700 people in Palm Beach County hospitals during the last fiscal year, according to data tracked by the Department of Children and Families.
A study commissioned by the public health district says that costs our healthcare system more than $280 million dollars a year, and that the new receiving facility could save nearly $150 million of that.
Commenters at Tuesday's meeting included members of law enforcement, a prosecutor, a public defender, members of the community who have benefited from the Health Care District's services, and Florida Rep. Mike Caruso, whose son suffers from mental illness.
The discussion lasted more than two hours, as commissioners pressed Davis on the project's timeline.
The funding agreement between the Health Care District and the county includes a completion deadline of 2034, but Davis called that a "worst-case scenario" and said the facility could be occupied as soon as June 2028, if all goes according to plan.
In its first vote of 2025, the board was unanimous in approving the $10 million. Commissioners also said they would establish a working group to discuss more immediate mental health needs in the community while the receiving facility is being built.
"It just goes to show that having this type of infrastructure, you can't start soon enough," Davis said.
