Precinct 2 Constables Homeless Outreach Team working to find permanent housing for homeless in Houston

HOUSTON - On Monday, Precinct 2 Constable Jerry Garcia and Precinct 2 Sgt. Ray Perez, with the Constable's Homeless Outreach Team, took FOX 26’s Leslie DelasBour to a heavily-wooded homeless encampment along 45 South. 

Precinct 2 says they want to make sure folks who are living on the streets find their way into permanent housing. 

"We’re working in conjunction with HPD's DRT team. They are amazing partners as well. So is H.O.P.E. Haven. The reason we are here at this specific location is we got some calls, some concerned citizens and residents letting us know that there were some homeless people in the encampment here," said Constable Garcia, "So we always offer housing. That’s something that we take pride in. That’s five years ago when we started; we created a homeless outreach team and our guys and gals have done an amazing job with that." 

Harris County Pct. 2 Homeless Outreach Team

Big picture view:

"So we have a sergeant who is in charge of our Homeless Outreach Team. He teams up with Jonathan Spears with H.O.P.E Haven," said Constable Garcia. "The way we've been effective is John Spears with H.O.P.E Haven, he comes out, and he does the actual assessment. He'll get all of their information, enter them into the system. Again, we offer them immediate housing." 

Sergeant Ray Perez says he meets people with different stories as to how they ended up on the street. 

"Most people on the streets aren't able to treat their mental health and what they do is they self-medicate with drugs and alcohol," said Sgt Perez. "I still get calls to this day from some of our clients that we housed two to three years ago, and they will ask me, you know, ‘I need some help,’ and we continue that relationship."

How it works

What they're saying:

Sgt. Perez teamed up with Spears, a case manager at H.O.P.E Haven, riding along together and trying to get people off the street. He says sometimes, persistence matters. 

"We would find the bridges and go underneath the bridges and find clients who are experiencing homelessness," said Spears. "What we do is we show up, and we bring people water and food, hygiene [products], things like that and ask people if we want to get help." 

Spears and Perez say they have to work to get identification for a lot of the clients on the streets. 

"They help us make ‘HOT IDs,’ which are Homeless Outreach Team IDs, which are used for identification purposes for a homeless person as well as a needed identification for the housing process," Spears said. 

"So when you get a referral, if you can’t be found, they will close your case out, Sgt. Perez said. "If they don’t find you within seven days, you start all over again."

Homeless Outreach Team houses woman

Local perspective:

Kimberly Love Weiss says she was raised in DFW area starting at the age of three. Originally, she was born in Wayne Co. Michigan. 

She says after coming to Houston from Dallas, tragedy struck and left her on the street after she got married to her husband in 2018. 

"When he brought me here, the first week he got hit by a car and ended up in a wheelchair. Second week, he went to jail," said Weiss. "I went to the 99 Cent Store and I met officer Perez and Jonathan and… I can’t remember what year, I think it was 2023, and I been out here since then." 

"So we met Kimberly about 2 years ago and had a housing assessment done for her and, when she got a referral. The housing case manager wasn't able to find her. So she lost her housing referral at that point, and she fell off and we ran into her again," said Perez. 

Kimberly says she has been struggling to find decent housing, but now she is happy to have a safe place to call home. 

"I like my walk-in closet. I can take a hot bath, shower, and I get to cook and clean, and I like it," said Weiss.

Funding cuts impacts H.O.P.E.

The other side:

Jonathan Spears says soon, he will no longer be with H.O.P.E Haven due to funding cuts, and says this will impact his work with Precinct 2. 

"The loss of funding pretty much means that for us at H.O.P.E. Haven, myself and another team was let go. And that means that we will no longer be employed there, and there will be no funding to pay us, and we will not be able to go out and do what we have been able to do," said Spears. 

Sgt. Perez says this will impact the work he does as well. 

"We are losing a lot of resources, we are losing a lot of funding, and, if there are not enough people out here to do this type of work, you’re going to see more and more people on the streets." 

H.O.P.E. Haven sent the following statement to FOX 26:

"We are 9 & 1/2 year old organization with about a half-million dollar budget. Last year we did 780 housing assessments and housed 151 people with a less than 2% recidivism rate. We had 5 full-time staff and do primarily street outreach to Harris Fort Bend and Montgomery Counties.  Our Partnership with Precinct 2 is vital to the work. Using a public-private partnership makes us stronger. What they are not allowed to pay for. These cuts are straight from HUD and the big beautiful bill. They are cutting something called the COC continuum of care. Each large city or metropolitan area has one. They control the major funding for homeless services.  We are just the small organization that gets part of the funding. We lost two housing assessors, so almost half our full-time staff. It's a sad day because for our grant, we were supposed to do 450 assessments and this year my 2 and 1/5 guys funded by the grant did 1,128, two months early! We applied for another grant to take the place of the one that went away, but they ran out of funds. We asked for $200,000 of the $9,000,000 they had, thinking we did such great work, we would get it, but that did not happen. One of those assessors rode with Sgt. Perez every day to make sure they could offer housing to the unsheltered they encountered."

HoustonHarris County