City forms team to target its most vulnerable homeless

EVERETT, Wash. (AP) — This is the lesson that the working-class city of Everett has learned: It takes a community to rescue the hardcore homeless.

It takes teams of outreach workers — building relationships with men and women struggling with addiction or untreated mental illness, prodding them to get help. It takes police and other agencies, working together to provide for their needs.

And it takes a prosecutor who was tired of managing the unending cycle of homelessness — jail-street-jail-street-jail. Hil Kaman left his job prosecuting the homeless and took up the challenge of finding solutions.