CORE and street outreach in Honolulu: who responds, and how

Getting help · Published 2026-10-26

Night view over downtown Honolulu streets toward the harbor and the Iwilei area, with lit buildings and roads — Looking toward the harbor and Iwilei at night from downtown Honolulu. Photo: Daniel Ramirez, CC BY 2.0.

For years, the main public response to a call about someone living on a Honolulu sidewalk was a police officer. Since late 2021 the City has also had another option: teams of emergency medical technicians and community health workers who respond to non-violent situations, build relationships and connect people to services. The program, run by the Honolulu Emergency Services Department, is called CORE.

What CORE is

CORE launched as Crisis Outreach Response and Engagement. According to the Emergency Services Department, it changed its name to Community Outreach Response and Engagement in July 2026. The program serves Oʻahu's unsheltered population by responding to crisis calls that do not require emergency medical care, then following up and linking people to community resources.

Teams are made up of emergency medical technicians (EMTs) and community health workers (CHWs) trained in relationship building and crisis prevention, and they travel in refurbished city ambulances. The department says its staff conduct daily outreach in Chinatown and other areas identified by the community. Early coverage described the design as modeled on Denver's STAR program, which sends health workers rather than police to non-violent calls. Police still attend when a situation may be dangerous.

What CORE offers

The department lists the following services:

outreach and engagement, including basic medical care from EMTs during community walks;
linking participants to case managers, care providers and therapeutic support;
help applying for or replacing SNAP, SSI, SSDI and EBT cards;
help replacing state IDs and opening bank accounts;
workforce readiness and job search support;
referrals to emergency and transitional shelters, rapid rehousing and boarding homes;
relocation services and family reconnection.

Replacing identification matters more than it might seem. Without an ID or Social Security card, a person cannot complete a housing application, start most jobs or collect many benefits, and documents are easily lost or destroyed while living outside.

How to request CORE

For non-emergency concerns about the well-being of someone who is homeless: the HNL 311 app, HNL311.com or (808) 768-2673.
CORE takes non-emergency requests only and returns calls during operating hours.
For a medical emergency, violence or immediate danger, call 911.

What the early data showed

The department published figures for its first year, December 2021 to December 2022:

1,066 outreach contacts;
more than half of participants identified as chronically homeless;
44 people worked with one on one on documents needed for housing placement;
17 of those 44 (38%) placed in emergency or transitional housing within the same week they consented to services.

Those numbers are modest, and early reporting by Civil Beat highlighted a structural problem: an outreach team can only refer people to shelter if there are beds available. CORE's results depend on the capacity of the rest of the system.

The 2026 audit that could not be finished

In 2025 the Honolulu City Council asked the Office of the City Auditor to review CORE. In mid-2026 the auditor stopped the work. Civil Beat reported that the acting auditor described the program's data systems as fragmented and its focus as changing too often to evaluate, and the auditor's fiscal 2027 work plan lists the CORE audit as terminated by a memorandum dated June 30, 2026. The city administration disagreed with many of the auditor's findings and has said it is changing its data systems.

The episode does not show whether CORE works; it shows that the City could not yet demonstrate it with reliable records. For a program that has become central to how Honolulu responds to street homelessness, that is a gap worth closing, and the City's May 2026 statement on the Point-in-Time count credited CORE among the reasons for fewer people sleeping outside.

How CORE fits into the City's approach

CORE is one part of a broader set of City efforts described in the May 2026 announcement: the police Crisis Intervention Team, the HONU navigation shelter, use of the MH-3 process and a coordination center the City calls the Kōkua Command Center, which it describes as a digital and physical hub with a real-time dashboard. The City presents these as working together; independent evaluation of how they interact has so far been limited, which is one reason the auditor's difficulty matters.

Other outreach on Oʻahu

CORE is one of many outreach teams. Nonprofit providers run outreach across the island, often focused on particular areas or groups such as youth, families, veterans or people with serious mental illness. Partners in Care publishes an outreach map so that people can find the team covering a given area. The City also runs the HONU navigation program, which provides short-term beds and 24/7 intake and works with police and other agencies to offer people a low-barrier place to go (see finding shelter on Oʻahu).

For people in a mental health crisis who may be a danger to themselves or others, police and the courts have a separate process under Hawaiʻi law, known as MH-3, for emergency examination and hospitalization. The City said in May 2026 that at least 52 people had been engaged through it and 14 had transitioned into more stable, longer-term care. That process is distinct from voluntary outreach and raises its own civil liberties questions.

What good outreach looks like

Across programs, a few principles recur in outreach practice:

Consistency. Trust builds through repeated contact with the same workers over weeks or months.
Practical help first. Water, first aid, a phone charge or help with an ID often opens the door to bigger conversations.
Choice. People are more likely to accept shelter or housing they have chosen than placements imposed on them.
Follow-through. Referrals work when someone helps with the next step: transport to an appointment, a reminder, a document.

If you see someone who seems unwell or in danger, our guide to what to do when you are worried about someone on the street sets out when to call 911, 988 or 311.