Adele Atwood parks her car in a commercial area in Northeast Portland. She crosses the street and walks toward a tent, calling out to the woman who lives there. She’s been visiting the woman for a few weeks now, building up trust one conversation at a time.
“You want any bananas or anything?” she asks the woman while also offering a blanket, which the woman accepts. Atwood chats with the woman about how things are going. “If you want to go grab a burger with me on Monday, we'll go sit and we can talk about what kind of supports you want. Super non-judgmental.”
As a street outreach worker for Cascadia Health, interactions like this are a critical piece of Atwood’s job. She meets people experiencing homelessness in the community — in tents, in cars, and on street corners — serving as a front door for services and stability.
“I go out and meet people where they’re at, and I build relationships,” she said. “Maybe they’re interested in services.… That could be access to shelter. It could be mental health supports. It could be seeing a doctor. I pass out things — water, wound care kits, Narcan — and share some information about what’s out there.”
Sending an outreach worker to meet and engage someone outside — instead of waiting for the person to walk into an office or shelter — is considered one of the most effective ways to reach people who are so focused on just surviving, they can’t easily navigate the path to shelter and housing.
Cascadia Health, Atwood's employer, is one of more than a dozen providers funded by Multnomah County to conduct street outreach.
Each outreach team brings its own set of services, and many have a specialized focus. Cascadia Health’s team, for example, focuses on clients with behavioral health challenges, and all of its outreach workers are certified mental health professionals. Other teams bring a culturally specific focus, or they prioritize housing navigation or intensive service navigation for people living in campsites posted for removal.
All teams funded by the Joint Office share a focus on survival support for people living unsheltered. But often, outreach teams also focus on connecting clients to long-term services. Through repeated conversations and meetings with their clients, outreach workers establish trust — and help open pathways to stability, like temporary shelter and housing.
Lived experience informs work
Atwood’s personal experiences with homelessness, substance use disorder and mental health challenges make her particularly passionate about the work. Many people who provide outreach and other homeless services in Multnomah County are helping their clients follow the same path out of homelessness that once guided them.
“Lived experience definitely plays a big role in why I would care to go out and talk to people,” Atwood said. “I struggled to maintain housing. I was on the streets. Staying in random homes, vehicles, hotels, anything that would constitute shelter.”
“It’s scary not to know where you’re going to sleep. But your mind becomes so busy trying to find food and shelter that you can’t even think about, ‘How do I start getting on my feet again?’” she said.
Atwood said an outreach worker helped her eventually obtain the support she needed to leave homelessness for housing. “Mentors and outreach people supported me about 15 or 20 years ago,” she said. “That’s how I got placed into some housing years ago, and did counseling and things like that.”
Building trust key to outreach work
Breaking through and forging a connection with someone who’s trying hard to survive, and who may feel let down by others who’ve tried to help before, requires compassion and persistence.
“Society in general has a negative viewpoint on folks that are outside. But you start to get to know people, and they are just regular people,” she said. “And if you’ve been isolated too long outside, then you feel very disconnected with your own community. You live right here, but you’re very disconnected.”
Atwood punctures that isolation by getting to know the people she’s helping and slowly building up trust. The first step is to “start talking about what’s important to the person that you’re talking to,” she said. “Their first goal might not be housing, so it’s just kind of finding out what it is they’re looking for, and how can I help facilitate that?”
The services Atwood provides vary widely depending on the needs of an individual client, and those needs may change as her relationship with the client grows. It could be helping them replace a lost or stolen ID card, secure a mailing address, or deal with past debts or a legal record — all barriers to housing and services. It could be working with their client to make appointments with a health care provider and then taking them to those appointments. It could be helping them sign up for public benefits they are eligible to receive like food assistance, Medicaid or federal disability assistance.
And it often includes helping clients move into shelter beds or obtain rent assistance to move into apartments, through programs funded by the Joint Office.
From streets to housing, connections continue
For Cascadia’s outreach team, the work doesn’t stop on the street. As a case manager, Atwood continues visiting and working with clients who find temporary shelter or housing, helping them stay in their homes for the long-term.
“We support folks in their homes when they do get placed to skill-build, and maintain that home,” she said. “It’s not just about finding housing; it’s about keeping it.”
After visiting the woman living outside, Atwood gets back in her car to visit some of her clients thriving in shelters and apartments. It’s a few days before Christmas, so her main goal is to deliver food boxes, toys and other presents that were donated for Cascadia clients.
She pulls up on a residential street in east Multnomah County to meet a woman who recently moved into an apartment with her young son. The client greets Atwood with a hug, and fills her in on everything going on in her life, including talking about her new job. Atwood gives her a food box along with gifts and a winter coat for her son.
It’s a short visit, but Atwood will be back again soon — and the same is true for the other clients she sees.
“My favorite part of my job? When someone goes inside, and gets their keys,” she said. “You can see people’s physical changes and moods lift, just by being inside.”
“Most people want to live somewhere, and just don’t have the set of tools to get there yet,” she said. “People want to feel safe somewhere. I think that’s key.
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