Holly Baltz55-year-old hotline for suicide prevention, crisis services will double its space in Lantana.
As the number of people who need help keeps growing in Palm Beach County and the Treasure Coast, the lifeline for them — 211 Palm Beach and Treasure Coast — is getting room to expand.
It broke ground Wednesday on a 12,000-square-foot office building in Lantana that’s estimated to cost $6 million.
The lifeline has existed for 55 years, starting as a drug hotline. The operators who work to talk people down from wanting to hurt themselves and connect callers to necessities such as housing and food as well as the staff that supports them have been crammed into a 6,000-square-foot building for more than 30 years.
“For me, this mission is deeply personal,” said board Chair Ken Kettner, president and CEO of Electrical Consulting Services, an electrical engineering firm in West Palm Beach. “I first became involved with this organization because of a tragedy that touched my family. And in just the past five days, suicide has touched my family directly.
“For me, that reality underscores something we all know, whether we say it out loud or not. Every one of us, at some point in our lives, will be touched by hardship, crisis or loss.”
Help for mental health, substance use disorders
The 211 service covers 2.3 million residents and answered more than 125,000 phone calls, texts, emails and online chats last year, its community dashboard reported. It assisted:
- 5,200 people with mental health and substance abuse challenges.
- More than 6,400 on suicide-related calls
- 3,600 housing requests
- 1,100 utility assistance calls
Calls to the suicide prevention and crisis counseling hotline have increased 24% in the past five years. It serves Palm Beach, Martin, St. Lucie, Okeechobee and Indian River counties. Palm Beach County accounts for 55% of those calls.
The service has expanded over the years to cover crisis counseling, special needs assistance, disaster distress and other health and human services. It also takes calls from the 988 line for mental health crises and services.
At its disposal are more than 5,000 free and confidential services for callers.
It hooks up people with everything from help for seniors in crisis to rent and food assistance.
Why this facility means so much
“If someone needs help, they need a person who says: ‘I’m here, and let’s figure this out.’ And that’s what 211 does, 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” said U.S. Rep. Lois Frankel, D-West Palm Beach, who added that the federal government provided $1 million for the project. “And that’s why this new facility matters so much.”
The 70 employees outgrew the building years ago, said Elizabeth Burrows, 211’s director of development and community relations.
In the meantime, they’ve modified closets and put multiple people in offices designed for one person.
The new building’s move-in date is scheduled for 12 to 14 months. It will provide a modern call center, more offices for administrators and program staff, a training room and meeting rooms, an employee kitchen/break and a decompression area, “which is really important to support our staff,” Burrows said.
“This is what we as a community have to stand for,” said Palm Beach County Commissioner Joel Flores. “We have to be able to provide these types of services because we all have had a rough day in our life. We all have faced challenges, whether it’s ‘How am I going to provide for my children? How am I going to pay for rent?’ or all the struggles that we deal with.”
