Sheriff’s office takes Narcan effort to homeless
Officials distribute anti-opioid nasal spray that can stop overdoses, block drug’s effects
Sherry Jones’ friend Daniel had been clean for 10 years when he overdosed on heroin and died just feet from where she still sleeps under the Interstate 45 overpass near West Road.
Daniel, whose last name she can’t remember, had been going through a tough time when he relapsed. That was three years ago. Jones, 34, is still sleeping under the bridge with her husband and their dog.
She has more friends living on Houston’s streets using drugs whom she worries about.
“They’re good friends of mine,” Jones said, pulling at her gray Astros T-shirt. “I can’t afford to lose another one.”
The Harris County Sheriff’s Office Homeless Outreach Team gave Jones and her husband, 30-year-old Paul Hensley, nasal-spray naloxone as part of its anti-opioid initiative. The team distributing the drug to
the county’s homeless population on Sunday. Naloxone, also known by the brand name Narcan, blocks the impact of opioids and can stop overdoses from drugs such as heroin. It can be administered at any point during a suspected overdose.
In 2017, the opioid epidemic killed 47,600 people in the United States, according to data collected by the Kaiser Family Foundation. In Texas, 1,458 people died of an overdose that year. Increasing access to medication such as naloxone that counteract overdoses has become a high priority. Public libraries, YMCAs and schools distribute kits.
The sheriff ’s office is also giving out Narcan to more than 100 inmates departing the jail each month. Both initiatives are part of the same $19 million federal grant for buying and distributing naloxone across Texas.
While not all people experiencing homelessness deal with drug addiction, research has shown that homelessness and addiction can be co-occurring issues: The federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration found in 2017 that 38 percent of the homeless were dependent on alcohol, and 26 percent had other substance abuse issues.
Harris County nurses Maria Acosta and Dariel Newman showed Jones how to use the nasal spray in three quick steps. It can’t hurt someone, said Newman, the head nurse of quality control at the Harris County jail. It can only help.
Hensley, who took a Narcan bottle from Newman, said he’d done two tours in Iraq and had been homeless since 2009. One of his hands sits crookedly on his wrist: He got hit by a delivery truck as he was panhandling under the overpass, he said, and the wrist never quite healed. The deputies agreed that the wrist looked like it needed surgery to fix.
When he got the Narcan nasal spray, it was Veterans Day.
“I’m not gonna lie, I’m tired of living out here,” he said.
HOT Deputy Tim Craze, known for his cowboy hat and affectionately nicknamed “Crazy Craze,” is the Homeless Outreach Team’s go-to for veteran issues. Craze is a veteran himself. Whenever he met a veteran such as Hensley out on the rounds, he compared notes with them and checked in about Department of Veterans Affairs benefits.
While they were out distributing Narcan, the Homeless Outreach Team gave out hygiene kits with wipes and toothbrushes and checked in on the people they met. They offered meals ready to eat and offered blankets ahead of Houston’s coming cold front. HOT was created in 2015 and has six deputies now, working in teams of two across the county. All are mental health certified.
Deputies gave Narcan to a 29year-old, who’s been living in the same spot under I-45 for the entire year he’s been homeless. People are generally kind to him, he said, probably because of his blackand-white, blue-eyed dog named Athena. He found her wandering around the freeway, abandoned, when she was a puppy.
The group makes stops to individuals under the overpass and at an encampment. They swung by the Hope Center Houston, which offers food, showers and computer usage to the homeless.
The sheriff ’s HOT team has an office on the second floor — or what will eventually become an office when the empty room gets computers and chairs. The new tech guy, one deputy said, is getting his feet wet. (“He better get his feet dry and over here,” another HOT member joked.)
At HOPE, the deputies gave a bottle to a once-homeless veteran named Ronald Davis — better known as Gunny — who volunteers at the Hope Center.
“Give it to someone who’s come in off the street,” Newman suggested. “The younger vets come back, they’re injured — they’re prescribed something and they become addicted.”