COMMUNITY SPOTLIGHT: A Cross-Agency, Multi-Sector Encampment Response

This is part of a series of alternatives to criminalization that are humanely and effectively helping people move off streets and into homes. Read other alternatives to criminalization at usich.gov/encampments.

Homelessness involves multiple systems that work with people at risk of or experiencing homelessness. This requires robust collaboration among a wide range of partners, including mayor’s offices, street outreach teams, health providers, public works and emergency management departments, land management agencies, schools, law enforcement and public defenders, as well as faith-based, civic engagement, and business communities. To help people move off the streets and into homes as quickly as possible, systems must work together.

In April 2024, the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness released 19 Strategies for Communities to Address Encampments Humanely and Effectively. One strategy urges communities to “establish a cross-agency, multi-sector response.” One of the first steps to doing this is to identify key organizations and decisionmakers so they can meet regularly and be in communication daily—not only at the executive level but also between middle management and frontline workers. 

While no community has all the solutions—or the resources to meet every need—many communities are implementing promising approaches that are showing positive results. One powerful example is Lane County, Oregon, and their encampment-focused outreach coordination. 

Here’s how James Ewell, the encampment-focused outreach coordinator for the Lane County Human Services Division, explains their approach:

Lane County is geographically large (roughly the size of Connecticut), and most of it is forest land. However, the Eugene/Springfield metro area has the county’s largest number of people experiencing unsheltered homelessness.

As part of Oregon Governor Tina Kotek’s “All In” emergency declaration on homelessness, Lane County created an Encampment-Focused Outreach Team and an Encampment-Focused Outreach Coordinator position in January 2023. Since we created the Encampment-Focused Outreach Team and Coordinator, three encampments have been closed, and 79% of the people living in them have been permanently housed.

Our new approach fosters a deeper engagement with people living in encampments and has connected more than twice as many folks to housing. It has also brought a new collaboration of cross-agency, multi-sector players together in a shared vision of ending homelessness in ways we have not previously seen. 

The street outreach team is a contracted local provider with years of street experience, and the coordinator is a county employee. The role of the coordinator is to facilitate communication among all stakeholders involved in a given encampment, which may include property owners, neighbors, law enforcement, public works, the outreach team, housing, health, and social service providers, and the people living in the encampment themselves. This allows the actual outreach team to focus on engaging with the people living in encampments and addressing their barriers to housing. 

Our outreach team and coordinator work with encampments comprised of six or more residents, and our ultimate goal is to help the residents of each encampment obtain permanent housing as quickly as possible. However, if they do not want to engage in services, it is not pushed upon them. The encampment residents are always involved in setting their own goals and pathways to housing.

The coordinator works with law enforcement to address issues that arise and to prevent ticketing or arrests, and the outreach team then works with the encampment residents to remedy those issues, which are often related to trash. Meanwhile, law enforcement is asked to email the outreach coordinator when they have identified an encampment they might flag for removal, hopefully giving the outreach team time to notify people living in the encampment and help them move indoors.

The outreach coordinator also works with public works to improve the health and safety conditions of the encampment. While the outreach team works to move people into housing, it is critical to offer basic and life-saving services to people living in encampments, such as portable toilets, handwashing stations, and dumpsters. 

On a weekly basis, the outreach coordinator convenes a case conferencing meeting with all stakeholders involved at any point. At this meeting, we identify and discuss each person’s barriers to housing, how they can be overcome, and set next steps to closely track progress, needs, and challenges.

After an encampment is identified (either by law enforcement, public works, other street outreach teams, businesses, or neighborhood associations), the outreach team engages people living in the encampment to get their consent for ongoing engagement. If the encampment is facing removal by law enforcement, we let them know during our first engagement. Due to the time and effort it takes to get someone housed—and the trauma and distrust that law enforcement can trigger—we ask law enforcement to limit their presence for at least 90 days after our first engagement and only visit the encampment when there is an imminent health or safety event occurring. This 90-day request has been challenging for some property owners and law enforcement because our community has historically addressed encampments by trespassing the area immediately.

As we work to implement intensive outreach and cross-agency, multi-sector collaboration, we have learned several valuable lessons:

• Ensuring you have ALL stakeholders included is critical. A large part of our success has been the relationship we built with a local property manager who agreed to provide block leased apartments for the people living in encampments. Furthermore, we failed to recognize that although one of the encampments was under an overpass and seemed far away from any housed neighbors, many of the housed neighbors frequented the river near the encampment and were key stakeholders.
• Celebrate and highlight each successful transition into housing. It’s important to be in regular communication with all stakeholders regarding the shared goals, progress, timelines, and outcomes.
• Ensure the voice of people living in encampments is included in all decisions and involve them in all planning. Ultimately, they are the experts in their own lives. 

Making the shift from traditional street outreach to encampment-focused outreach continues to be a work in progress in our community, but the Encampment-Focused Outreach Coordinator position has been critical to opening dialogue with new stakeholders, creating alternatives to criminalization, and helping more people move off streets and into homes.