$200,000 Awarded for Street Outreach
YRID has been awarded $200,000 through the Performance Incentive Grant Fund (PIGF) by the Governor’s Office of Crime Prevention, Youth, and Victim Services. This funding will support the launch of a robust street outreach initiative focused on public safety, trauma-informed engagement, and social service connection along the York Road corridor. We are partnering with Glenwood Life Counseling Center and Roca Baltimore to implement this program. Glenwood will help us train to provide daily peer-based outreach to individuals in crisis or at risk, particularly those struggling with substance use or chronic instability. Roca will support with training in CBT-based de-escalation and conflict resolution methods.
The outreach team will also support corridor merchants with incident response, while documenting safety issues in a new tracking system. This program builds on community safety surveys conducted earlier this year and responds to a growing call for non-police, neighborhood-rooted intervention models. Services will include:
- De-escalation and peer outreach to individuals in crisis
- Safety patrols and presence in priority zones
- Resource connections for housing, employment, and recovery
- Community education on trauma and violence prevention
Immediate next steps are to finalize the grant agreement with the state, reengage key partners to begin planning staff training, and begin hiring essential staff that were fully funded by this request – Program Manager and Outreach Specialist. We also have finalized the hire of two young adults through the Maryland Service Year Option program to also support as Outreach Specialists, and they are planned to start in one month. We have two additional funding requests pending from the Mayor’s Office of Homeless Services and Abell Foundation, which if awarded would fully fund all components of this program.