Community Corner
B.A.R.T. And The Homeless - Press Release
New overnight homeless outreach team for Contra Costa County connects the homeless with services
Article Source: B.A.R.T.
New overnight homeless outreach team for Contra Costa County connects the homeless with services
Release Date: 01/11/2019
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BART’s partnerships with communities to address homelessness got a lift this week when an overnight outreach team began working in Contra Costa County, focusing on end-of-line stations.
This important work is helping to shift homeless people who might be riding trains or sleeping in stations for lack of anywhere else to go, and instead connecting them with services such as clean, warm shelter beds. The result, for customers on the Contra Costa lines, should be a reduction in homelessness on trains and in stations before the peak morning commute rush, and also on late-night trains. It’s the first week of the pilot program and the team will be putting metrics in place to measure progress.
“This was one of the missing pieces,” said Armando Sandoval, the BART Police Department’s crisis intervention coordinator and community outreach liaison. “Now we have this CORE team supporting my role and providing a direct connection to the Contra Costa Health Services.” It’s a continuation of the BART Homeless Outreach Program that started in San Francisco in November 2017.
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CORE, which stands for Coordinated Outreach, Referral, & Engagement, works to identify, engage, and connect persons experiencing homelessness in Contra Costa to healthcare, social services, and housing. While CORE has always been part of the toolkit for helping homeless people on the BART system in Contra Costa County during daytime hours, the new pilot program that started this week provides for two workers to be dedicated to the BART system every weeknight from 11 pm to 7 am.
“Those are key times because they’re typically when individuals are entering the BART system at the start of the day or on the system without a place to go at the end of the night,” Sandoval said.
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Robert Riechel
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