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Street Reach Provides Mobile Care on Squamish Streets

January 30, 2025

Outreach & Harm Reduction Stories of Hope

Our Street Reach team is out on the front lines to keep Squamish safe and healthy for every person, everywhere.

Keeping everyone in our community healthy and safe is the central purpose of who we are and what we do. Our work is not confined to the walls of our central building at Under One Roof. Reaching everyone who needs help is critical which requires outreach workers to get outside and make sure everyone in Squamish has what they need.

Our Street Reach team is a friendly face on a dark night for many people. Through regular walks to known encampments, continued mapping of new tent sites, and open-door drop-in sessions, our participants have shared hours of anecdotal evidence about the value of the work we are doing.

Listening to the voices of our clients, peers, and participants is a core value and practice for our outreach team. In September 2024, we gathered several testimonials from both participants and a peer (a trained individual with lived experience in addiction, poverty, and/or homelessness) about the value of our work:

“I’ve been in this area for a few weeks and the Street Reach team come in with genuine care and a want to connect. The fact that there are people that want to make sure that we are safe and provide services; they come without judgement and a kind ear, you know they are willing to talk. I’ve felt more care from those on the Street Reach team than from some people in my 35 years of construction work. They say - judge a country on how they treat their sick, elderly, and most vulnerable… Street Reach gives me hope”

- Back 40 Resident

I’ve seen staff cruising around and checking on people. They tend to make sure that us in the Back 40 [encampment behind Under One Roof] are all accounted for and safe. I appreciate that they try to put a little sunshine in someone else’s day, even if it’s as small as a cup of hot chocolate and a smile. It really means a lot to people.

- Back 40 Resident

“Street Reach is one of the first things I ever did here. Street Reach is about helping people and making sure everyone is ok; I like meeting people and helping people and that is important to me. My family, not a lot of my family but my aunts, uncles are doctors and nurses, my dad was a doctor, the most meaningful thing is that, you know, we are helping people who can’t help themselves because there is a lot of that here. To be a part of something, that’s important, because I haven’t been a part of something in a long time, you know, so, it’s good. To me it was a chance to learn something and that I have, big time!”