SAN DIEGO _ San Diego Sheriff's Deputies Aaron Bert and Matt Faddis cautiously approached the makeshift cardboard shelter and tent under a bridge in Spring Valley, not sure of what they'd find.
They weren't there to ticket or arrest anyone living on public property, but to offer help.
"We can't arrest our way out of the homeless problem," Bert said.
The two deputies are part of the Homeless Assistance Resource Team formed by the San Diego County Sheriff's Department in June. Under the Greenfield Drive bridge on North Magnolia Avenue, they met three men who agreed to walk down the embankment and meet with workers from various agencies.
"I think it's a great idea," Eric Moore, 39, said about the team effort to help him and other homeless people in the area. Moore said he has been homeless off and on for about five years.
The concept of law enforcement working with service agencies to help homeless people isn't new. Several city-funded police departments throughout the county have their own homeless outreach teams, while some cities that contract with the Sheriff's Department have deputies assigned to Community Oriented Policing and Problem Solving, or COPPS, which focuses on quality-of-life issues that often involve homeless people.
Unincorporated areas, however, had no similar homeless outreach. Sheriff's Sgt. George Crysler said the gap left a population of homeless people unconnected and sometimes far away from services that could help them.
"There was an outreach from the community saying they needed help," Crysler said. "We were finding parks, specifically in Spring Valley, were having lots of transient and homeless people who needed help."
The Sheriff's Department answered that call in June by forming HART to work specifically in unincorporated areas of the county. Bert and Faddis were recruited from the department's Sheriff's Analysis Driven Law Enforcement team and are the only HART deputies for now.
"I thought it would be a good opportunity to make a positive difference," Bert said. "Homelessness across San Diego is making a huge impact right now."
During their four-day work week, the two deputies may be in Fallbrook, Valley Center, Lakeside, Ramona, Bonita or Spring Valley. On some days, they accompany a county Public Works Department team that clears abandoned homeless encampments.
On Wednesdays, they patrol Spring Valley and surrounding areas in an expanded outreach that includes service providers from the McAlister Institute, Crisis House, Family Health Center, ResCare, the Salvation Army, San Diego County Health and Human Services and the Public Works Department.
"Every year I get a flu shot," said Raymond Blackwood, 53, after receiving a vaccination from public health nurse Indira Caunin from Health and Human Services. "I'm a firm believer in that."
Blackwood said he had been homeless for about a year, and he talked with several of the people from agencies during the outreach about housing and shelter opportunities.
John Gayhart, 57, is one of Blackwood's neighbors under the bridge. He's been homeless since falling into despair about 10 years ago after a woman in his life died.
"I just gave up on everything," he said. "I got to where I couldn't care about anything."
He said he has since met someone else who helped give him a reason to live, but he still faces many other challenges in overcoming homelessness. He said he's a skilled worker and is eager to find a steady job, but also has injuries and transportation issues to deal with.
"I'm worried about the whole system, everything that's going on," he said. "The whole country is in bad shape. I've been around 50-odd years, and I've never seen this many people homeless."
At another location, the team met Ally Williams, 31, who said she became homeless after moving out of an abusive relationship.
"I try not to be obviously homeless," she said. "It's hard enough living this life in the first place. It's humiliating, being in the public eye all the time."
Outreach workers with the deputies gave her a flu shot, set up a meeting to see if she was eligible for the county's general relief program and got her a voucher so she could get a free DMV identification card to replace one that was stolen.
"I think they're doing a wonderful job," she said.
Since the program started in June, Bert said they have had several encouraging success stories, including the time they helped a mother and her two young children who had been living in an East County river bed.
"They had been homeless for only a couple of days," Bert said. "She was desperate to get off the street and to get her kids off the street. She didn't know what resources were available to them."
People Assisting the Homeless and Home Start got the family a voucher to get them into a hotel, where they stayed for a few weeks, and the Salvation Army helped them get reunited with family members on the East Coast, Bert said.
Crysler said the team's focus on unincorporated areas is helping reach homeless people, like the mother found living in the river bed, who may not know about services available to them. On one recent Wednesday outing, an outreach worker from the health and human services provider ResCare offered vouchers for 28 nights at a local motel to some people the team encountered.
Bert had not done homeless outreach before joining the team, and he said he has learned that the key to reaching people is to build trust and a rapport with them over time.
"Everyone is their own person," he said. "You have to approach things differently, depending on the individual. It does take time before they're willing to accept resources."
About once a month, the team sets up a station at a community center where service providers meet with homeless people who have been driven there by Bert and Faddis after meeting the deputies on the street.
At an event in October, Crysler said, 45 people were offered some type of service and several received temporary shelter.
