The homeless issue, across the nation, and here in the Washoe County area, is difficult to tackle.
The Washoe County Sheriff's Office says it had a successful 2025, but there is still more work that needs to be done.
The Office's Homeless Outreach Proactive Engagement team or HOPE team is made up of one Sergeant, two Deputies and two Case Managers.
Four days out of the week, they go out into the community to try and get these people some help.
Since 2021, the HOPE team has made contacts with thousands of homeless people.
Let's look at the stats from last year's efforts.
They had 2,930 contacts and of that, 2,728 resources were accepted.
194 people were placed in stable housing. 30 of those being children.
In terms of people going back onto the streets, only 24 percent of those clients returned to camps or emergency shelters.
For the environmental side of things, 34 clean ups were done on encampments and other areas near the Truckee River.
In total, they removed 116.5 yards of trash.
Looking into the new year, the HOPE team Sergeant is hoping to get more funding to bring support specialists back.
"We kept 91 percent of those individuals housed for over a year," said Sergeant Sonia Butler, WCSO HOPE team. "Since then, we don't have that tenancy support specialist as much, meaning that only certain people with certain disabilities qualify for tenancy support. Where we are starting to see a decline because people are not transitioning as well."
SGT. Butler says they no longer have the funding to support this.
Butler says that typically when housing someone who has lived on the street for a long time, it takes a while to get acclimated into the new lifestyle.
She says it usually takes at least six months to show them just the basics of living life. Things such as using proper hygiene, paying bills, and cooking.
In 2024, Washoe County issued its camping ordinance at its Board of County Commissioners meeting. It brought lots of contention.
Last year, the HOPE team made zero arrests and only formally charged three people.
Two of those were people involved with other crimes outside the courthouse in Downtown Reno, and one ran away into the Truckee River.
The third person was absolutely refusing services and was leaving lots of trash for about nine months.
Butler says there is some misconceptions on the people they help.
"We not only serve the ones that are in the encampments, but especially families that are living in weekly motels."
The data says only 36 percent of their clients have substance abuse disorders. 67 percent reported disabilities including mental health disorders.
Washoe County Sheriff Darin Balaam says that he's proud of the efforts and says they getting homeless people help is simply about meeting them where they're at.
He told a story about when he met a man who had been homeless for 15 years.
"The only reason he accepted services was he had his mom's dog because she had passed away and he knew and he told me this, 'I knew if I didn't take care of that dog and something happened to that dog, my mom would come back and haunt me' and so it's little things like that," the Sheriff said.
Balaam says often times a lot of homeless people don't want to get housing because pets are not allowed at the complex. However, the Sheriff says through help from other community resources they are able to work around that and get assistance in many other ways.
