3. De-escalation and Communication

Contents
Interacting with Unhoused People
The guide
For specific jobs

What you should come away with: the ability to carry out an approach-and-contact sequence that lowers rather than raises the temperature.

This is the longest section and the most useful one, because it is the only part that changes what you do with your body and your voice in the first ten seconds — which is where these encounters are usually won or lost. It is written as prompts and drills rather than as an essay, and it is worth rehearsing out loud.

3.1 Before you approach

Covers:

  • Decide what outcome you actually need. Most situations require someone to move, not to be punished — those call for different openings.
  • Scan first: is the person asleep, awake, in distress, with belongings, with a pet, with another person?
  • Time and light. Waking someone in the dark is the highest-risk contact there is, and the one most often done carelessly.
  • Angle, distance, exit path, and where your hands are.
  • Whether this is yours to do at all, or whether it belongs to a supervisor, a crisis line, or nobody.
Not written yet.

3.2 Opening the contact

Covers:

  • Announce yourself from a distance. Never open with a touch.
  • Say who you are and what you do, plainly, and do not let a uniform or a badge imply police.
  • Ask before instructing. The first sentence sets the whole encounter.
  • Give the person something they can say yes to.
Not written yet.

3.3 Verbal de-escalation

Covers:

  • Volume, pace and pitch — the mechanics, not the sentiment.
  • Reflecting back what you heard, and why it works on someone who expects to be ignored.
  • Silence as a tool. Repetition without escalation.
  • Phrases that reliably escalate: threats you cannot carry out, ultimatums with no exit, counting down, profanity, and playing to an audience.
  • Disengagement — how to leave a contact that is going wrong.
Not written yet.

3.4 Trauma-informed communication

Covers:

  • What a startle response looks like, and why it is not aggression.
  • Belongings are not clutter — they are everything the person owns. Touching them is the fastest way to a fight.
  • Predictability: narrate what you are about to do before you do it.
  • Preserving someone's dignity in front of onlookers, including your co-workers and customers.
Not written yet.

3.5 Cultural humility

Covers: language access, differing norms around eye contact and personal space, and the specific history that makes some people expect anyone in authority to hurt them. Humility here is operational, not decorative.

Not written yet.

3.6 Drills

Run these in pairs where you can — two minutes each, swap roles, talk it through afterward. Alone, walk through what you would actually say.

  • Waking a sleeping person.
  • A request to leave that is refused once.
  • A contact with co-workers or customers watching.

Full situations are in 6. Situations.

Not written yet.
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