Momentum For Homeless Outreach Programs Keeps Growing
As cities across the country seek innovative solutions to address the country’s growing unhoused population, homeless outreach programs are becoming a core policy lever that leaders are pulling. This week’s Safer Cities spotlights three homeless outreach efforts that illustrate the strategy’s growing momentum:
1. Taking Mental Health Care To The Streets.
"It is difficult to get homeless people to visit mental health clinics or stick to a regimen of medication,” Dr. Shayan Rab, a psychiatrist in Los Angeles who works with the county’s HOME (Homeless Outreach and Mobile Engagement) team told CBS News reporters Euan McKirdy and Mark Strassman. To solve that problem, Dr. Rab and the other mental health professionals who comprise the HOME team “bring their compassion and expertise to the streets, where they form bonds and build trust with [homeless] patients… many [of whom] are experiencing some kind of mental illness, which can be intensified by the stress of not having a home.” The “team’s work is holistic—along with diagnosing and treating mental illness, they work tirelessly to find people housing—permanent if possible, temporary if not— in an effort to break a cycle of deprivation, hopelessness and oftentimes, violence…”
A Home Team Case Study:
“Mike spent the last 20 years living on Los Angeles' streets. He was a loner, surviving mostly on a daily morning burrito – a substantial meal, he said, that would keep the hunger pangs away for the rest of the day… but with the HOME team’s help, he started taking a combination of medications that kept him grounded and clear-eyed, more so than he had been in two decades. After a course of treatment, administered when the HOME team would show up at his tent, the team found him a room in an L.A. care facility. He has now been living there for almost a year…”
Related: For The Los Angeles Times, Doug Smith profiles Dr. Rab, “L.A’.s first street psychiatrist making sidewalk rounds [and] transforming homeless lives.”
2. A Fire Department Leading The Way On Homeless Outreach and Shelter Linkage.
For KKTV, Colorado Springs’ local CBS affiliate, Brian Sherrod reports on the city Fire Department’s new Homeless Outreach Program, or HOP, which is composed of “trained behavioral health providers with combined experience in mental and medical health assessment, treatment, education and care.” The HOP team “focus[es] on helping the homeless in their current state and location instead of enforcing them to leave [by providing] medical care on the scene[,] passing out applications to help find better shelter [,] [and] if a person is due in court, the team gives them a ride[,] brings water to keep the community hydrated, and treats for their dogs.”
“What it boils down to is we are not enforcement. We are resource navigation,” Amanda Smith, a community behavioral health coordinator with the Colorado Springs Fire Department, told Rocky Mountain PBS’s Alison Berg: “Getting ticketed and having to pack all their things up and move is a traumatic thing for people.” As a local judge told the news outlet, the different roles that the fire and police departments play matters a lot to the outcome: “There’s a level of trust with the homeless population and the fire department [that’s not present with] the Colorado Springs Police Department.”
3. A Two-Layered Approach To Homeless Outreach.
The much-lauded Albuquerque Community Safety department works “hand-in-hand” with a new team from the University of New Mexico’s Center for Inclusive Health to provide medical support to the city’s unhoused population, Alexa Skonieski reports for KRQE, the local Fox affiliate. For example, Albuquerque Community Safety identifies an encampment where “there are people there who may need medical attention” and then the University of New Mexico’s Center For Inclusive Health team “tries to get out there within 24 hours” with “services that range from general checkups and wound care to pregnancy screenings and treatment for common infections.” Calling in a specialized medical team to provide healthcare makes a big difference for two reasons: First, as a physician who works with the CIH team explains, people who are unhoused often will not leave their belongings in order to obtain in-office medical care, because “going to an office visit for some people could be the difference between having everything stolen from them or getting health care.” Moreover, as the ACS directly told KRQE, “We see [first] responders who have that compassion fatigue, and so being able to help people in that moment, with a doctor, is so important.”
