The Homeless Outreach and Mobile Engagement Team - the Home Team program - is designed to provide real time street intervention with individuals in the downtown business district and Bayside neighborhood who are engaging in disruptive behavior.
We recognize that these behaviors are often the result of psychosocial stressors associated with poverty, homelessness, substance abuse and mental illness. Often these behaviors cause pedestrians, potential patrons, business and property owners to feel uncomfortable and/or unsafe.
Providing real time intervention services with trained outreach workers will significantly improve the sense of safety and well being for potential patrons and pedestrians in the Downtown Districts and Bayside neighborhood.
Youth Alternatives Ingraham will provide assessments to individuals in crisis. These assessments will be provided by YAI as needed with a crisis worker responding on location to individuals who may be in need of more intensive services.
Street outreach workers will also provide ongoing support, education and information to individuals living on the streets in an effort to attract them to engage in meaningful behavior change. By staying connected to individuals on an ongoing basis, HOME Team outreach workers will help increase the likelihood that those individuals will follow through with needed services, reducing the incidence of disruptive behaviors and nuisance crimes in Portlands Downtown District and Bayside neighborhood.
Home Team Press Conference
July 9, 2010
This project is led by The Milestone Foundation in partnership with:
Portland's Downtown District
Mercy Hospital
Preble Street Resource Center
Youth Alternatives Ingraham,
Portland Health and Human Services
Portland Police and Fire Departments
Portland's Economic Development Division
The United Way of Greater Portland
The Center for Research at the University of New England.
