After years of finding syringes and human waste on the ground, experiencing knocks on her front door asking for money, and a home invasion two years ago, one Atascadero resident is fed up with the homeless encampments near her home.
She lives close to Stadium Park and thinks it’s about time that something is done about it.
“It’s ridiculous,” her post in the Everything Atascadero Facebook group read. “Now I feel like I live in the middle of Skid Row.”
The resident didn’t respond to New Times‘ interview requests, but hundreds responded to the post. Some said they hated what the area has become; others called for empathy amid a failed mental health system.
“It won’t change unless the police have a right to get tough with them. They have no consequences,” one comment read.
Police Chief Daniel Suttles told New Times that the department is trying multiple solutions, and it doesn’t intend to “get tough” using citations. Instead, he said, the Atascadero Police Department intends to help solve the root of the issue.
“We go through a lot of steps before we get to the point where we’re going to give someone a citation,” Suttles said. “It has to be a really special circumstance for us to cite somebody first contact. I haven’t seen it yet since I’ve been here.”
Police want to help unhoused residents before they enforce against them.
“First and foremost, we are humanitarian in our efforts,” he said. “We want to try to find a solution for those who are unsheltered and find a way to get them housed. If that’s not feasible, then we’ll turn toward cleaning up encampments.”
Outreach efforts stem from Atascadero’s Community Action Team (CAT), a partnership between the city and SLO County Access and Crisis Services. According to Suttles, this team is composed of four professionals—two Atascadero police officers, a county clinician, and a case manager.
Each day, the team goes out into the community and tries to make contact and develop trust with each unhoused resident.
The primary goal is to make sure that each person is offered resources, Suttles said, whether it’s a place at the El Camino Homeless Organization, transportation to rehabilitation, or a needed prescribed medication for mental illness.
For crimes like a home invasion, Suttles said that an unhoused resident would be processed just as anyone would.
“Maybe we won’t offer resources to somebody who has committed a felony, but I think that goes for every citizen in the entire city. So that’s not unique to this population,” he said.
SLO County Access and Crisis Services Division Manager Samantha Parker said the CAT program has grown since it was started in 2019, funded through a grant from the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Now it’s funded through the state’s Mental Health Services Act and operates in Atascadero, Paso Robles, and SLO city.
According to Parker, CAT operates in each area by responding to 911 calls that fall under behavioral health.
“A lot of [the calls] are de-escalation, diverting folks away from the criminal justice system and into care when they’re experiencing a mental health crisis or behavioral health crisis,” she said. “What’s really cool is [callers] have direct access to our clinics, our outpatient treatment. We can get telehealth out there onto the streets. We can administer medications under the direction of the doctor. So, it kind of brings in a little bit of street medicine in crisis intervention.”
When CAT isn’t on calls, its members are out on the streets for outreach and engagement alongside police officers, and Parker said that the two fields make a good team when it comes to building relationships with the locally unsheltered population.
“They’re going into the riverbeds; they’re getting to know the community of folks that are unhoused in our county. And I know Atascadero PD, in particular, they have a really strong relationship with the folks on the street. They are often on a first name basis,” she said.
However, Parker said, the process can be slow as the team attempts to build a rapport and trust with the unhoused community, and success can be a nonlinear, long-term process.
“I’ve seen them work with someone for months and months who finally is ready to get sober, is ready to work with a wraparound treatment team and get on some mental health medications,” Parker said. “And we’ve been able to get them housed and into treatment and reintegrated with family.”
Parker added that the partnership between professions is teaching different cultures how to work together and fulfilling a “huge societal need.”
“The landscape has changed so much since the George Floyd riot. There’s so much more publicity and eyes on these incidents where people in mental health crises are perishing,” she said. “Law enforcement, they’re not getting into their jobs to be social workers and mental health workers; we’re not really getting into our profession to be peace officers, but our worlds are converging. They’re just colliding. And so, it’s been a really cool way to support each other and kind of help hold both cultures accountable.”
Sarah Hardesty has been a licensed psychiatric technician on the Atascadero team for three years, and throughout that time, she has helped unhoused residents get to medical and mental health appointments, filled out paperwork, and provided support over Zoom with medical professionals as needed.
“Anything that makes the client feel more comfortable getting the services that they need, we attempt to do it with them,” she said.
One of the hardest parts of the job is seeing a backward slide after months of effort.
“It’s hard to get someone moving forward and then watch them come out of 90 days of rehab and fall right back into the same pattern,” she said. “But our clients know that we’re here to help them no matter how many times, and get them right back into another program, if we can.”
But that just means the team must look at any sort of progress as a win.
“Whether that’s being able just to get someone to walk into drug and alcohol walk-in with us for five minutes and then leave—we got them to that step, and maybe the next time, we can get it further,” she said.
Police Chief Suttles said that some residents don’t want the help, and that’s just human nature.
When residents opt out, Suttles said that police enforce cleanups to keep all residents, housed or unhoused, as healthy as possible.
“We have the obligation to take care of and protect all of our citizens, including the unhoused. But we also have an obligation to provide a clean and safe environment for everybody,” he said. “We understand if you’re homeless, you have to go somewhere. We’re not trying to make the status of being unsheltered a crime, but if you set up an encampment in a creek bed with running water, that can have some unintended consequences.”
According to Suttles, before a cleanup, police and CAT will notify campers at least 24 hours in advance to gather their belongings and move locations.
And when the encampments pack up and move to new places like Stadium Park, Suttles said this is often when Facebook posts pop up.
“I would ask that people understand the reason why they may see an encampment,” Suttles said. “There’s going to be the perception of an increase in our homeless population, but doesn’t necessarily mean there is an increase. It just means that you might see them more because, quite honestly, we just cleaned up their encampment.” Δ
Reach Staff Writer Libbey Hanson at lhanson@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Dec 12-22, 2024.