September 15, 2026
Nate Schwiethale
Dimitrios Mastoras
Nate Schwiethale
Dimitrios Mastoras
Every day, across the United States, police officers respond to a variety of issues related to homelessness. Common public complaints can include camping, mental health episodes, disorderly conduct, or drug use. Unfortunately, many of these police responses often occur without coordination with other municipal agencies and service providers, or within a formal prevention-based framework.
We know these issues well because we have spent decades responding to and managing issues related to homelessness as police officers. In this article, we will discuss that while many police departments have adopted “Homeless Outreach Teams,” they often do not adhere to a formal model that supports the mission of community service providers. When police homeless outreach teams or patrol officers operate unilaterally, and without a formal model and training grounded in evidence-based research, they may be causing more harm than they realize. We also discuss what is needed to ensure our fellow officers are doing their part in co-producing safety, rather than being the sole agency responsible for it.
Research
Recent research by Natalie Kroovand Hipple, PhD, and Kayla Allison, PhD, has shown that strong interagency partnerships and relationships are essential for an effective response to individuals experiencing homelessness. In March 2026, they authored the Homelessness Response Guide, published with the National Policing Institute, to assist agencies in responding to chronic homelessness. Some of the key issues identified in the guide are: “There are no national standards to guide law enforcement responses to homelessness,” enforcement-only approaches do not reduce homelessness, and officers are most effective when they support and partner with housing and social services.
These issues recently came to light in Dallas, Texas, offering a textbook case of a scene playing out in dozens of American cities. The Dallas Police Department Homeless Outreach Team conducted an enforcement and encampment clean-up without Housing Forward staff, the agency responsible for coordinating homelessness response. Simply clearing encampments and making arrests without coordinating with community service providers erodes the fragile trust between unhoused individuals and outreach workers and slows down the stabilization and housing process. Without that trust, providers cannot build the individual relationships necessary to assess trauma, deliver healthcare, and transition people into stable housing.
Police Need a Formal Homeless Outreach Model
A common refrain from police chiefs when discussing homelessness is “We cannot arrest our way out of the problem.” However, officers need more than a philosophy and platitudes from their leaders to respond effectively to homelessness. Uncoordinated sweeps by police often result in arrests for low-level misdemeanors such as trespassing or illegal camping, which frequently snowball into arrest warrants when missed court dates inevitably follow. These reactive strategies have been proven to be an inefficient use of public safety resources.
A shift from enforcement to prevention requires a structured, multi-agency model that teaches officers empathy-based, trauma-informed methods rooted in counseling and social work. It requires police departments to explicitly teach officers how to collaborate with multidisciplinary teams, recognizing that their role is to support the stabilization of the environment, not to preemptively disrupt healthcare and housing interventions.
For more than a decade, Officer Nate Schwiethale’s groundbreaking work has proven that traditional, enforcement-first policing does not work in addressing homelessness. Realizing that uncoordinated encampment sweeps and low-level arrests only disrupt ongoing care, Schwiethale helped pioneer a formalized, full-time Homeless Outreach Team. Working together with city services, successfully transitioned more than 1,000 chronically unhoused individuals into housing and reduced chronic homelessness by 77%.
Central to the sustainability of this work was the integration of the Proactive Alliance relationship-based approach, which was made possible by a US Department of Justice Byrne Criminal Justice Innovation (BCJI) grant. The structured framework, rooted in counseling psychology principles, establishes individual relationships and collaborative problem-solving between first responders and social service providers. The model requires the multidisciplinary team to focus on prevention before a crisis occurs and has earned national recognition from the National Alliance to End Homelessness.
Moving Forward
If police departments are to be capable allies in addressing homelessness, they need to move beyond philosophies and reactive strategies by adopting a formal, relationship-based model that supports social services. Officers need training that prioritizes collective problem-solving and case management while using enforcement as a last resort. Elected officials and city administrators have a responsibility to ensure their law enforcement agencies adopt structured, multi-agency training and establish binding protocols that require coordination between municipal agencies and community service providers.
About the Authors
Nate Schwiethale is a police officer and nationally recognized subject-matter expert on police responses to homelessness, and Dimitrios Mastoras is a retired master police officer and a relationship-based policing expert.
Written by
Nate Schwiethale
Dimitrios Mastoras
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