Hawaii Homeless Program Failed After Prosecutors And Police Wouldn't Play Ball

When people experiencing homelessness in Mesa, Ariz. are charged with low-level offenses such as trespassing or public intoxication, they have the option to participate in community court to get their case dismissed if they agree to seek help from government programs and services. Participants are assigned a "navigator" to help them obtain required identification documents, search for housing, or apply for jobs, and more than 90% of those who graduated from community court in 2021 have not ended up back in the legal system.

Although Eugene, Oregon's long-running, successful CAHOOTS program serves as one model for the new Portland Street Response, a more relevant model can be found in Denver's STAR program. Like CAHOOTS, STAR responds to mental-health and other crisis calls with medics and counselors rather than police officers. But Denver's size, demographics, and homelessness make it much more analogous to Portland. In STAR's first six months, it handled nearly 750 calls without a single arrest. Both STAR and PSR are starting small, so more resources are needed if the pilot projects succeed.

In its first six months, Denver's STAR program (Support Team Assistance Response) handled 748 emergency calls that in the past would have gone to the police or firefighters. Two-person teams of a medic and clinician helped people with personal crises related mainly to homelessness and mental illness. None of the calls required police involvement and no one was arrested. The city plans to spend more to expand the program, which is meant to prevent needless violence and incarceration from calls to the police that other types of first-responders can better address.

Eugene's well-established CAHOOTS program for replacing police as first responders to certain types of 911 calls has become a model for multiple cities as they seek to replicate its success in an era of questioning the role of police. While it saves its city money and replaces arrests and possible violence with social and health services for people needing housing or mental health care, or suffering from addiction, CAHOOTS is somewhere in the middle of the spectrum of programs responding to these challenges. Communities' differences will dictate what works best for them.

An array of services in Pima County, Arizona, greets hundreds of people getting released early from jail or helps keep them out of jail in the first place. By providing drug treatment, housing, job assistance, and other help that people need instead of incarceration, the county's Criminal Justice Reform Unit and Jail Population Review Committee saved the county $2 million in jail costs over just part of 2020. Drug use also declined and officials hope to see longer-range benefits in lower recidivism.

Even while Los Angeles police criminalize homelessness with "sweeps" to clear encampments from public property, state and local programs have helped thousands of people find housing and receive services like counseling and criminal record expungement. Programs like LA DOOR and Project Roomkey use public-health and housing-first approaches to address people's underlying problems rather than subject them to endless cycles of arrest and incarceration, all of which cost far more than the helpful strategies while remaining far less effective. Street outreach is done without police escorts, to build trust.

Temporary housing providing drug treatment and other services to people experiencing homelessness appears to cut the chances that people arrested in Portland on minor charges will cycle repeatedly through the criminal justice system. In 2019, 250 people living in transitional housing were booked into jail, versus nearly 3,700 people still living on the streets. The rearrest rate for people living on the street is 87%, but 30 points lower for people with housing. Portland officials have been slow to provide alternatives to arrests and jail since a report in 2017 that most arrestees in Portland are homeless.

Since April 2019, Olympia’s Crisis Response Unit has sent civilian first-responders instead of police officers to hundreds of “quality of life” calls such as a mental health crisis or problems related to addiction or homelessness. Providing services while doing outreach on the streets, following up on previous calls, or dispatched by 911 operators or police, these responders connect people with the services they need to be safe and healthy, freeing police to handle more serious calls and avoiding police interactions that can lead to violence or needless jail stays.

When Baltimore put the necessary resources behind a “call-in” program that intervenes with people likely to commit gun violence, from 2006 to 2012, homicides dropped by 30% and shootings by 40%. The program, which no longer is used in the city consistently enough or with sufficient resources, summons people on probation or parole for gun crimes. A panel of law enforcement, social workers, and community members pairs the threat of federal prosecution and imprisonment with social services to help people build a new life. This approach has been shown in many cities to be effective at reducing violence.

Albuquerque established a new city department, Albuquerque Community Safety, that handles some of the 200,000 calls to 911 every year for a range of low-level, non-violent problems that don't require a police response. Since its launch in August 2021, the department has fielded just two teams of behavioral health specialists on call during the day. The city plans to expand the team's hours and responsibilities, though some are uneasy about exposing the unarmed workers to the potential for violence. The city has a long history of police shootings of mentally ill people, and ACS is meant to curb that threat.