(C) El Paso Matters.org
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New El Paso initiative uses HEART to reach homeless [1]
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Date: 2025-07-14
On a recent humid afternoon following a barrage of morning rain, Robert Briewahn sat with Crypto, his caramel-and-white Australian shepherd, on a median near the corner of Cromo and Sunland Park drives.
Briewahn, 59, was clad in a red T-shirt and tattered gray pants with his walking cane nearby, along with a backpack of belongings that included a compact water bowl and treats for Crypto. He held a small cardboard sign that read, “Please help me and my dog.” Lacking housing, Briewahn said he hoped to collect enough money for him and Crypto, his companion of four years, to pay for a night at a hotel.
“This dog is my life, if I lost her I would probably lay down and die,” Briewahn said as he gave Crypto a treat. “If I could get my disability (pay) I wouldn’t be out here doing this.”
Briewahn is among the about 800 estimated homeless people throughout El Paso, including about 154 living on the streets and the rest staying in emergency shelters or transitional housing, according to the El Paso Coalition for the Homeless January point in time count in 2025.
Nationwide, about 771,500 people experienced homelessness in 2024 – the highest ever recorded, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
The increased presence of homeless people in El Paso has been felt citywide, but particularly along a mile stretch of Mesa Street near Coronado High School on the Westside, leading to numerous calls to police about encampments and trespassing on private property. Other calls involved homeless people stealing food from grocery stores – including an incident that led to a security officer being slashed with a knife when he tried to stop a man from taking warm food without paying.
“I found out that productivity wise, our officers were losing time because of this continued cycle of criminal trespass with unsheltered individuals,” said Commander Steven Lopez of the El Paso Police Department’s Westside Regional Command Center.
Officers were spending a large part of their shifts arresting homeless individuals, Lopez added, who would then be deemed indigent and released, often returning to the same area. From August 2024 to June, the command center received about 300 calls for trespassing and made 100 arrests.
Lopez said rather than issuing citations, making arrests or running the individuals off the property, he wanted to respond with a human touch, especially after the food theft incidents. He reached out to Denice Sepulveda, a community experience manager with the city’s Community Driven Innovation Office.
What resulted was a pilot program called the Humanitarian Engagement Action Response Team – or HEART, a cross-functional team comprising about 30 agencies that conduct street outreach and provide an array of services to homeless individuals.
“Now we have reduced the contact time for someone seeking assistance from about, I’m gonna say, between 12 to 18 hours to 20 minutes – so that’s a huge win there,” Lopez said, citing an incident where a homeless veteran who was dropped off along Mesa Street after a hospital visit. Concerned citizens alerted police to the man in the wheelchair, and it took the responding officer about 18 hours and numerous calls to various organizations to get the veteran help.
A person panhandles at the intersection of N. Mesa and Interstate 10 in West El Paso, June 25, 2025. El Paso has seen an increase in homelessness since last fall, when changes in New Mexico’s approach to its homeless population pushed many people out of the state. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)
Since it was initiated in November with a focus on the Westside, HEART has helped house 60 people, about 40 of them during April and May, according to an update recently presented to City Council. El Paso police officers have also initiated 30 requests for services for homeless individuals through the program.
The last few years have seen several efforts to consolidate local governments, social service agencies and nongovernmental organizations to work together to address homelessness – particularly as the COVID-19 pandemic and the migrant influx left thousands of people living on the streets. Some of those initiatives have been folded into the HEART program.
“The important part of this is that everybody’s coming together,” Sepulveda said.
Now the coalition of HEART organizations is looking to expand the program to other parts of town, including Northeast and Central El Paso. To start, HEART will lead a citywide, three-day initiative in late July where droves of volunteers will reach out to homeless individuals to get them help.
That surge in outreach will focus on homeless veterans. Officials at the El Paso VA Health Care System said there’s an estimated 40 to 80 homeless veterans in El Paso on any given day.
“The surge event will help us reach out to homeless veterans where they are and offer them immediate access to shelter, health care and support services,” El Paso VA spokesperson Connie Medrano told El Paso Matters via email. She said helping homeless veterans is often challenging because they have higher rates of mental health and substance abuse disorders.
Panhandling, trespassing and encampments
HUD’s Annual Homelessness Assessment Report lists rising housing costs, inflation and stagnating wages as factors leading to homelessness.
Lopez also attributes the increased presence of homeless individuals – at least on the Westside – to changes to panhandling and other laws that impacted the homeless in Las Cruces. He said that some of the homeless people they encounter are migrants.
The Las Cruces City Council in August changed its ordinances to prohibit solicitation on private property and on medians, and banned shopping carts outside shopping centers.
Natalie Green, the housing and neighborhood revitalization administrator for the city of Las Cruces, said the ordinance change was followed by outreach and education – not enforcement. She said the city started providing homeless individuals with backpacks, wagons and wheeled luggage to replace their shopping carts.
Green said service providers and outreach staff reported seeing “our usual folks in the usual places” after the ordinance change.
“We haven’t seen this migration to El Paso,” Green said.
While the city of El Paso has long prohibited soliciting or panhandling on medians and other areas, it hasn’t focused on enforcement. Insead, the city works to build trust and encourage them to take advantage of services, Sepulveda said.
In El Paso, City Code prohibits camping in public parks without a permit.
In Texas, a ban on encampments in public areas such as parks, streets, underpasses and parking lots has been in place since June 2021. Criminal trespassing and illegal camping are Class C misdemeanors that can carry a $500 fine.
El Paso follows the state law, but is not focusing on enforcement. Las Cruces has rules for when parks open and close, but does not have a similar ban on camping and has a designated area for homeless to set up their camps though they are not required to use the space, according to the Las Cruces Bulletin.
A June 2024 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a ban on homeless encampments – allowing cities and states to fine people sleeping in public places.
How HEART works
Agencies under the HEART collaboration include the El Paso police, fire and code enforcement departments, University Medical Center of El Paso, the El Paso Opportunity Center for the Homeless, El Paso Coalition for the Homeless, Emergence Health Network, Project Amistad and the El Paso Center for Children, among others.
Under the initiative, EPPD officers approach individuals who appear homeless or have an encampment to see if they are willing to accept services.
If so, the officer will call El Paso Helps, a network of nonprofits that provide shelter, rental assistance and medical services. The network responds within 20 minutes to provide services or take the individual with their belongings to the Welcome Center at 201 E. Ninth Ave. in South El Paso. There, staff begins an intake process that includes beginning case management, providing medical care if necessary, and finding more permanent housing such as a longer-term homeless shelter, or apartments.
The Welcome Center in South El Paso is currently well below capacity but will play a role as the first point of contact for guests in El Paso’s multi-agency collaboration to deliver services to people in need, June 25, 2025. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)
If they do not accept services, EPPD will provide them a red backpack with snacks and hygiene items, along with paperwork for the individuals to track interactions with police or providers to let other officers and volunteers know of any services received.
The individuals who don’t accept help are not forced to leave their spots unless they have an encampment or are blocking traffic or sidewalks, Sepulveda said. If they are blocking streets or sidewalks they are asked to move, she said.
Lopez said those with encampments are given time to collect their personal belongings before police, code enforcement and environmental services staff remove them.
HEART partners meet biweekly to go over individuals’ cases or to connect with those who have not accepted services to make sure they have food and medicine. The goal is to build trust so they’ll eventually accept help.
Welcome Center, El Paso Helps set the stage
John Martin, executive director for the Opportunity Center for the Homeless, said the pandemic and migrant crisis forced local governments, nonprofits and agencies to work collaboratively to address the needs of the growing homeless population.
Local nongovernmental organizations, or NGOs, typically operated in silos prior to the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent migrant surges, he said. In 2019, the last “normal” intake year before the height of the pandemic, the Opportunity Center helped nearly 1,500 individuals.
The NGOs began working more closely with the city and county in 2020 when the pandemic led to more homelessness as social services became limited and shelters were forced to reduce capacity.
“Then, as things start to lighten up a little bit with COVID, we see tens of thousands of migrants that are entering our community, which coincidentally happened for about a two-year period before things slowed down dramatically in that respect,” Martin said.
El Paso Helps, which is part of the larger HEART initiative, was created in 2022 by the city’s Department of Community and Human Development with three primary partners – the Opportunity Center for immediate shelter, Project Amistad for street outreach and rapid rehousing, and United Way of El Paso County for homeless prevention such as rental assistance.
The program launched just as the migrant influx grew so large that thousands of migrants – who are considered homeless if they don’t have a place to live when they arrive in the city – passed through El Paso.
“Everybody has seen the value that, if we work collectively, that we can really accomplish (resolving) some major issues,” Martin said.
During the 2024 calendar year, the Opportunity Center helped more than 4,000 homeless people. Martin attributes the increase to ongoing economic constraints, including the rising cost of housing and everyday services.
Robert Griewahn plays with his dog, Krypto, as he panhandles in Westside El Paso, June 29, 2025. Griewahn, who lost his home in Ruidoso floods last year, has had Krypto since she was a puppy and is unwilling to leave her behind to enter a shelter or housing that does not permit pets. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)
Martin said Briewahn would likely benefit from the HEART program.
Briewahn said he has been unhoused since his cabin burned in the Ruidoso wildfires in June 2024. The South Fork and Salt Fires consumed about 25,000 acres of the Lincoln National Forest in the Smokey Bear Ranger District, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Briewahn moved in with a friend in Sunland Park, New Mexico, for a few months before he had to leave. He had no other permanent housing options and was unable to complete his disability paperwork, he said.
He said he hasn’t sought help because he doesn’t want to be separated from Crypto – a common challenge among homeless individuals, Martin said.
“If my dog can’t go with me, I’m not going,” Briewahn said.
The upcoming three-day outreach aims to include pets as part of the services by offering free vaccines, spay and neuter services and crates so pets don’t have to be separated from their owners at the Welcome Center.
The Welcome Center in South El Paso opened in August 2022 as part of the El Paso Helps initiative to provide initial support, basic medical services and shelter while individuals were referred to an appropriate community provider for extended services.
Martin said it almost immediately was needed to address the migrant crisis, but has now returned to its original intent to serve the local unhoused population.
On Wednesday, Bill Irvin, the Welcome Center director, said they are preparing for how to accommodate animals that are not certified service dogs.
“Right now, we don’t accept pets, but what we want to do is break the walls down, break the barriers down (for people that resist services because pets are not allowed),” Irvin said. “Come the surge, we’re going to start accepting pets, and then we’re gonna see how that goes.”
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https://elpasomatters.org/2025/07/14/el-paso-homeless-eppd-enforcing-encampment-laws-heart-program/
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