Coalition outreach teams use one-on-one approach to reduce Houston’s homelessness

As families headed to their cars and evening joggers passed, Gary Powell sat to the side of the main path through Houston’s Hermann Park, steps away from the public restroom that soon would close for the night. 

Powell, wearing silver necklaces, bracelets and a green, Snoopy pom-pom hat, did not have an identification card, emergency contact or know his Social Security number when an outreach team for the Coalition for the Homeless approached him in early December. 

The team was on its third walk around the park in two weeks – a step to gain trust and give resources to the unhoused people sleeping there – and asked Powell where he planned to spend the night. 

“Right here,” he said, patting the concrete barrier he was sitting on next to his bags. “What do y’all do to get me in contact with somebody? I’ve got a phone.”

The six-person group is the only outreach team for the coalition – the leader of Houston’s homeless response system called The Way Home – but one of many in the city. 

The teams’ work could change depending on the success of a funding campaign spearheaded by the coalition and the city of Houston that aims to piece together $70 million over the next year. The funding would boost the scope of the outreach teams and create resource hubs throughout the city. 

The expanded outreach would coincide with Mayor John Whitmire’s plan to expand Houston’s civility ordinance, which bans people from sleeping in public spaces, citywide. 

EARLIER: Houston to expand civility ordinance, open resource hubs under new plan to end homelessness

The details still are fuzzy regarding how and when the funding will be acquired and how unhoused Houstonians will be treated if the civility ordinance expands without the additional resources, housing advocates said. 

The Landing walked along with the coalition’s outreach team earlier this month to see its work firsthand and better understand the differences Mayor John Whitmire announced in November.

On its face, the process appears fairly simple: the team approaches individuals who appear to be experiencing homelessness. They ask where the individuals plan to sleep that night and if they receive services from any of The Way Home partners, such as The Beacon or Loaves and Fishes. 

The team asks for names, birth dates, and an address used to receive mail. Does the person have an identification card? An emergency contact? Can the team take the person’s picture for the Homeless Management Information System? 

Team members make note when they meet a person already in The Way Home system to help create a timeline for the individual’s case manager. 

Distrust of the system, however, runs deep among the unhoused, team members said.

Hit or miss

Of the people the outreach team talked to that warm December night, only three gave their names. Only Powell let the team take his photo. 

The rest were entered into the Homeless Management Information System under generic descriptions: what they looked like, what they wore. The team members had seen some people repeatedly and greeted them enthusiastically, even without knowing their names.

The team also approached three men hanging out on park benches who, they quickly discovered, were not homeless. 

Two of the men seemed confused at the questions while the third, who sat between them, bent over laughing. The team members walked away joking with him as the others shook their heads. 

Powell was the last person the team talked with at Hermann Park, and he asked for food. The team offered what they had in their truck: a blue bag with bottles of water, electrolytes, granola, Vienna sausages, a hygiene pack, gloves and a blanket. 

They did not include a housing resource guide because Powell said he already received services from Lord of the Streets. They planned to help Powell get a homeless outreach team identification card if he did not have one the next time they walked the park.

“We run out of (supplies) so quick,” a team member said.

At one point, the team saw a man surrounded by bags sleeping on a relatively secluded picnic table. The sun had not yet set, and a black kitten peaked out from between his knees. They hesitated to wake him.

“People sleep during the day because it’s not nighttime where they’ll have to just make sure that their stuff is not taken,” said Khena Minor, an outreach worker for the past two years. “…That may be the only time the person got a good night’s rest.”

Two outreach workers eventually approached the sleeping man, speaking gently to wake him up. He raised his head, but would not give his name or accept any help or information. As the team members walked away, he and the kitten laid back down. 

A few minutes later, team member Rey Uresti approached a man sitting on a bench. He told her he worked with SEARCH Homeless Services to get resources, and Uresti asked if she could look him up in the homeless management system to see if he was missing any paperwork. 

“And then he said, ‘Did God send you? Because if God sent you, I don’t need your help,’” Uresti recounted. “…I don’t like to force people into doing anything. So, I just told him that if he changed his mind, we’d be walking around here.”

Building rapport

Kelly Young, president and CEO of the coalition, said rejection is part of the trust-building process.

“That rapport building is if I keep seeing the same people over and over again. And also maybe some of the people that I know as part of my family, my street family, start to use services or get involved, I start to trust it more,” Young said.

Whitmire asked Young to work with the city’s housing director and chief of homeland security to build the next phase of the city’s homeless response plan.

Houston already has gained a national reputation for its efforts to reduce homelessness through The Way Home initiative. The new plan aims to build on that success and expand it – if the funding is obtained.  

The unhoused population requires more than beds to sleep in each night, Young said. The funding could enable each outreach team to include professionals in the mental health field or people who deal with substance abuse. 

“That collaborative body fundamentally changes the plan because it’s no longer like . . . ‘Well, that’s a mental health thing, and hopefully the mental health team will come out and view them,’” Young said. “You’re just threading a needle, but that commitment to everybody who’s there is different than what we would have done before.”

During the coronavirus pandemic when federal money flowed more freely toward homeless services, Young said outreach teams engaged with more than 120 encampments to build enough trust to get people into stable housing. Now, the teams clear individual areas at a time, like Hermann Park, meaning they dedicate time to educating the people who regularly sleep there on their options before law enforcement clears the area. 

Whitmire told the Landing he planned to expand the civility ordinance near the start of the new year. Under the ordinance, Young said police officers would have to act as their own outreach teams. 

The goal is to always have beds reliably available for officers to offer when they find individuals sleeping outside, Young said, and to treat them with compassion to find the help they need.

“They’ll do the same intervention that the outreach team does to start with because the whole idea is really just to get people off the street,” Young said. “There’s no point in citing them. It’s not helpful.”

Finding front doors

The outreach team had to walk away from a man in the park who said he needed $3.75 to take a train and two buses across town to ensure he met his parole officer on time the next morning. If he did not make it, he said, he faced fines or could have his parole revoked. 

The team, composed of social workers, is not allowed to give out petty cash. Sometimes, they have Metro cards to distribute, but those days are far and few between. 

They could offer him water, a housing resource guide or hygiene projects – but not what he said he needed most. 

“I’m not asking for nothing else,” he said angrily, growing frustrated and starting to shout profanities when the team said they could not give him cash. “Please. Please. Yes, you can. You don’t want to.”

When outreach teams cannot help, Young said the goal is to create a space people can always go. 

The Beacon, a resource center downtown that offers free hot meals, private showers, laundry services and housing assessments to unhoused individuals, is an example of the “front door” model Young said the hubs could emulate. 

The Beacon serves about 250 people per day, five days a week, said Stephanie Truong, chief program officer. They enroll everyone who enters in the Homeless Management Information System and have seen a “staggering” increase in clients since June – when they started averaging around 450 new enrollments per month. 

The Beacon is a day center and is not open around the clock, but individuals in need are dropped off at its doors all hours of the day and night, Truong said. Sometimes, they have just been released from a hospital. Other times, they have been kicked out of their homes. 

Every outreach worker and housing advocate the Landing interviewed agreed the success of any future program hinged on one component: funding. 

With greater funding, Young said the hubs would operate like a “library resource desk” where people could come, be assessed and be directed to services that best meet their needs. 

Truong did not know the specifics of the larger plan beyond what Whitmire announced in November, but she agreed the hubs were a missing link in the current system. 

“They are necessary, with funding,” Truong said. “If we can get to that point because it would be really expensive, but if the mayor’s plan is to end street homelessness, that is what we need.”

The $70 million the mayor and Young hope to raise will get the program off the ground, but the funding has not been entirely secured.

The city has committed $25 million for the first year, but plans to petition Harris County for another $20 million, seek $15 million from philanthropic organizations and $10 million from other governmental entities 

“It’s always been based on the limitations of the funding, not limitations on what we would actually do if we had the funding,” Young said.

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