At 6:30 a.m., somewhere within the University Crossing Public Improvement District (UCPID), you can find Michelle Sanders and Lionel Weber making their rounds. Today, it’s an early morning trip, but later in the week, the evenings may be a more prime time.
Sanders and Webers are members of the Street Outreach Team for the UCPID Homeless Outreach Program.
“Sometimes we go on foot. Sometimes we take our vehicles and ride and then stop at some of our hotspot locations,” Michelle says. “Once we locate someone that’s in need of services, then we will approach them, we introduce ourselves, let them know who we are.”
The program was created in 2020, after UCPID’s Board of Directors unanimously voted to allocate funds and resources to establish a formal effort to facilitate homeless outreach.
“Post-COVID, rents were starting to go up,” UCPID Communications Director Ginger Greenberg says. “Everybody sees the writing on the wall. ‘What are we going to do?’ As kind of a perfect storm of people experiencing homelessness explodes here in our area.”
The conversation continued, with Greenberg and Executive Director Patrick Sanders quickly realizing they needed an expert to move forward with next steps.
In came Michelle, who also works at The Bridge Homeless Recovery Center. Her previous experience led her to look into alternative forms of security when doing sweeps throughout the encampments and other prominent hotspots in the area — citing the trauma an individual experiencing homelessness may have may have when dealing with law enforcement.
“Police officers are trained to address crime,” Patrick says. “I will say that some officers will go out of their way to help and assist when they can, but they are not trained to assist in getting people care and into homeless shelters.”
Weber had already been working in the PID for over 10 years, so when Patrick gave him a call and outlined what they were looking for, he was all in. Currently working as a security manager and being a veteran who served as a military police officer for the U.S Navy didn’t hurt either.
“We try to approach — ‘Hey, can I have permission to talk to you? Is it okay if I do this’ and giving them control of the conversation,” Michelle says. “We ask permission, because we realize that when you encounter someone, especially if there’s a tent, that’s their home, right?”
The two have established a rapport with the individuals who frequent the PID, and for Michelle, this is the most important part of the job.
“When dealing with persons experiencing homelessness, it’s not a one-day-fix,” Michelle says. “It’s building a relationship, that’s meaning consistency — being out in the PID on a regular basis. Sometimes we can’t even get to that housing conversation for a few months, until we’ve built that trust that comes in the meanwhile, while we’re out there, building those relationships.”
When first meeting a person who may be in need of their services, Michelle does what she calls a triage assessment. What are their medical needs? What are their immediate needs? What are their mental health needs?
She shares that while their mission has remained the same, the growth in her work has come from striving to be even more educated about different resources so that she can then share them with those experiencing homelessness.
“It can be the difference between whether a person gets permanent supportive housing, if they have a disability and they’ve been chronically homeless, or if it’s a rapid solution, where they maybe don’t need a lot of help. They just need help getting an ID and getting into an apartment so that they can save,” Michelle says. “It’s kind of a different experience with each individual that we encounter.”
