After years of planning, the Orange County Board of Commissioners unanimously voted to purchase a five-acre parcel of land for a new crisis diversion facility.
The parcel is located off Waterstone Drive in Hillsborough, across from the UNC Hospital campus.
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Commissioners agreed to pay $1.35 million for the land.
Behavioral health and the possibility of this facility have been discussed since 2019 in Orange County, and staff have been searching for a spot for the building since 2023.
The facility will have an urgent care component, a longer-term treatment center and an area with community services.
The county says the facility will be one-story and include a large courtyard and healing garden.
The urgent care for behavioral health issues will be available for anyone over four years old for 24 hours. The facility will have crisis services available for up to two weeks for adults, and a resource center with information about behavioral health services.
Commission Chair Jamezetta Bedford told WRAL News there is a need for more services in Orange County.
"One thing the pandemic revealed, we knew that there was need, but there was actually far more need, across all areas and ages, than we thought,” Bedford said. "I don't think children have really recovered from that fear of, ‘My mommy, my daddy, my grandma could die.’ In Orange County, we were making calls daily to seniors in lockdown. I think the loneliness factor and that anxiety and so much that goes with aging, is another population."
First responders will have the option to divert people to the facility, and individuals can also walk in and seek services.
Bedford said diversion is an important part of the plan.
“One of our major premises was that this was needed to take pressure off the ED [emergency department] and pressure off the detention center,” Bedford said. "There's such a shortage of beds across the nation and in North Carolina, so the hope is that we can provide that warm handoff. It's a nice phrase, but really it means making sure they have an appointment with a provider, they have medications."
According to a news release from the county, staff estimates the center will see 365 behavioral visits per month, including ones before, during, and after a person is in crisis.
This latest effort follows a trend in North Carolina of a different way of engaging with people in crisis, and mental health in the criminal justice system.
Alamance County opened its Behavioral Health Center in Burlington in June 2024.
The city of Durham launched its crisis response program, HEART, in 2022. It uses crisis call diversion with clinicians embedded in the 911 center, Community Response Teams in which unarmed personnel respond to calls for service, and Co-Response teams, where clinicians are paired with police officers.
From June 2022 through the end of March 2025, Durham’s Community Response Teams have provided 14,000 responses, and the Co-Response teams have provided more than 5,000 responses.
The Wake County Sheriff’s Office is partnering with the state to offer additional services for defendants with mental illness who have been determined “Incapable to Proceed,” or ITP.
The NC RISE program, spearheaded by the Department of Health and Human Services, already exists in Mecklenburg and Pitt counties, and is now expanding to Wake County.
The program at the Wake County Detention Center allows defendants who have been deemed ITP to get treatment while in the detention center.
"By making capacity restoration services available in detention centers and communities, we are able to get people the care they need faster and moving through the judicial process more quickly," said NC Health and Human Services Secretary Dev Sangvai in a news release.
The services provided were previously only available in state hospitals, even though defendants deemed ITP do not always need that level of care.
In Mecklenburg County where the NC RISE program was implemented, referrals to the hospital for people with ITP decreased by 60%.
While Orange County Commissioners have agreed to purchase the land for their new facility, the building timeline will depend on decisions made next week regarding the county’s budget.