Over the past few years, one of the constant issues expressed by both the homeless and by advocates is the lack of street outreach to the homeless.

That complaint came up again in November during the county Homeless Coalition meeting. Amanda Straight, Chautauqua Opportunities Inc. housing and community development director, said it had been brought to the coalition’s attention that street outreach is a problem, again, throughout the county. While the county does have some street outreach funding through the Safe Point Lighthouse Outpatient Clinic in Dunkirk, there is no Continuum of Care funded street outreach program within the county. That means a lot of the street outreach efforts to connect the homeless to services available through the county is left to volunteers.

That’s simply unacceptable.

It’s hard to be serious about helping the homeless if we leave street outreach to volunteers. We’re not sure that street outreach necessarily needs to mean creating new county-funded positions. To the contrary, street outreach may be an effort that can be part of an existing position that is retasked with spending more time in and around encampments or shelters in an attempt to get the homeless into programs that can help.

That brings us to encampments — something Homeless Coalition members said are being seen in the area. On the plus side the camps tend to be occupied during the day but not at night or in the early morning, which is an indication the encampments’ occupants are making use of Code Blue shelters. But, the flip side is they are coming back to their camps when Code Blue shelter hours end. There are good reasons to get the homeless out of encampments. No one wants to have makeshift structures made from tents, tarps and other discarded items popping up near them. There are legitimate concerns about open drug use and human waste in the encampments, and we saw the issues that arose when encampments popped up in the middle of downtown a couple of summers ago.

Many of the homeless refuse the services that exist to help them, turning away from programs that can help them and, in some cases, actively rejecting reintegration into society.

Volunteers who spend time doing street outreach to the homeless are performing a truly important public service. But we have to wonder if trained professionals are needed in some of these cases. It’s a conversation worth having.