This App Hopes to Give Homeless Outreach Workers Real-Time Data While They're on the Street

Eric Zassenhaus
Eric Zassenhaus is dot.LA's managing editor for platforms and audience. He works to put dot.LA stories in front of the broadest audience in the best possible way. Prior to joining dot.LA, he served as an editorial and product lead at Pacific Standard magazine and at NPR affiliate KPCC in Los Angeles. He has also worked as a news producer, editor and art director. Follow him on Twitter for random thoughts on publishing and L.A. culture.
This App Hopes to Give Homeless Outreach Workers Real-Time Data While They're on the Street
Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

Los Angeles invests hundreds of millions each year to alleviate homelessness, but the networks that underlie those efforts are often held together by legal pads and spreadsheets.

It took a person who's suffered through the system to try to update it, so that the homeless and their advocates can get what they need, when they need it.


Anthony Greco is one of the few people who can say he's been on most sides of the issue. He's lived on the streets, dealt with homeless family members and friends, he's worked in the shelters and counseled people dealing with substance abuse.

"I've literally been on every side of this problem in one way or another," Greco says. "I've been trying to get people into treatment in some way or another since I was seven years old."

The Get Help platform is a result of his lifetime of experience with substance abuse and homelessness. And it's been so effective that Los Angeles took it from beta to a basic tool in the city's plan to deal with one of its largest emergencies: Getting homeless people off the street during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Anthony Greco is the founder of the Get Help app.

A Lifetime Getting People Help 

Greco grew up bouncing from house to house while his mother sought help at substance abuse clinics.

"When I was 15 years old, one day I came home from school and my mom and her boyfriend and that family had moved away out of town," Greco says, "and the house was empty except for all the stuff in my room."

That led him into his own struggle first with homelessness, then with substance abuse and finally into recovery and toward helping people in the same circumstances he'd once found himself in. Ultimately, he got his PhD in clinical psychology and worked with patients with substance abuse issues.

But at every step in his career, Greco found himself trying to solve the same problem: How do you match a person to the services they need at the moment they're willing to ask for help? Having real-time information is key, he says.

"There's a point when someone says that they want to get help," he says. "It's a simultaneous feeling of excitement and absolute dread at the same time, because on one hand, you're so excited that they want to get help and they want to go somewhere and then on the other hand the next thought is where am I going to go? Where am I going to call with how am I going to find an available bed? And it's a nightmare."

Once someone is willing to get help, the next question is where, and how? Greco describes calling rehab and shelter facilities as a child, as a homeless man and as a clinical psychologist to find a client or friend a bed, only to find that facilities were full or not accepting new residents, or that no one at the center seemed to have an idea of whether they had a place to stay.

Later, he encountered the same problem from the other end of the phone line when he was working at those same facilities.

"I remember getting calls, late at night," Greco says. "It was a mom on the other end of the phone wanting to know whether I have space for their son or daughter. And I didn't even know what our census was."

Had he known the headcount, he would have known how many available beds there were.


If Getting Shelter Were As Easy As Ordering an Uber

The idea for the app came when Greco, now a psychologist, found himself unable to get the same basic information he was seeking as a kid.

"I realized that it was just as difficult for a licensed clinical psychologist to get someone into treatment as it was for a seven year old."

Greco had pictured a simple app that would match the world of homeless needs to the world of resources available to them.

"I said, you know, there has to be an app for that," he says. "You can order a pizza at four o'clock in the morning, or a cheeseburger from Sonic and have it delivered from Pomona, but there's no tool to be able to find a bed for my friend."

Greco quickly realized that if he wanted to be able to offer immediate help, he needed more than a list of numbers; he needed accurate real-time data. Who had open beds right now, tailored to specific needs of individuals — with substance abuse problems, with mental health problems, with kids, with domestic abuse trauma, with medical needs?

He had a vision for the app, but he didn't have a background in tech or business. Luckily, as he searched for funding for the idea, he came across Michael Root, one of the early engineering pioneers at Riot Games, who quickly volunteered to be Get Help's CTO. The company registered as a public benefit corporation in 2019.

"I had no idea what I was getting into," Greco says.

Solving Problems for Homeless People

Greco says it usually takes between 6 and 7 approaches (sometimes more) before someone who's experiencing homelessness will accept help — and often the kind of help people on the street are looking for isn't what street teams have to offer.

"The first service that they often will accept isn't a bed," says Greco, "but they'll accept a place where they can go get a meal."

Greco says it's critical to seize those moments, where a person is willing to ask for some kind of help, if only to build trust.

"It's about meeting the person where they're at," Greco says. "And that's what I do as a therapist."

In other words, he says focus on building trust, and provide people what they need, rather than what you think they need. Not everyone is looking for a shelter bed.

"That's where I operate from and where Get Help operates from," he says.

The app tries to reflect this by listing a range of services both big and small from shelter and sober living beds to food pantries, showers, laundry, storage facilities and health care services. All those services are what social workers call a continuum of care that will eventually lead to stability, he says.

Solving the Problem for Shelters

Greco at the Weingart Center in Los Angeles' Skid Row.

On the other end of the spectrum, Greco realized that if he wanted to be able to solve family members' 4 a.m. emergencies, he'd have to work with the shelters to get the data that would be crucial to getting their loved ones fast help.

What he quickly found was that many of these shelters and sober living facilities were using outdated tools to keep track of who was in their facility.

"They were still managing their inventory — and still are — is literally using yellow pads, sometimes whiteboards, Excel documents and email exchanges."

They reached out to the Weingart Center, one of the first shelters in Skid Row that specializes in providing emergency housing for people with mental illness. By the estimate of its current CEO, the company houses about 600 people nightly, and provides counseling, employment and other other services to thousands more. All of that requires an incredible amount of record keeping.

"In order to really run an operation," says Weingart's CEO, Kevin Murray, "you've got to do intake, you've got to assign room, you've got to assign food cards."

In addition, you have to make sure you're collecting the information that health insurers and the federal government require, as well as making sure you're tracking the basic needs — linen and toothbrushes, for example — of the people you're serving.

"Almost every provider is inputting this practice information in, you know, at least two, maybe multiple systems."

Greco's team met with Weingart to develop a data management system that could help them track that information.

"They actually sat down with our people at all levels to find out what they needed, and what would be helpful to them," Murray says. "We both sort of opened up to each other about what we wanted to do. And so we were participants in developing the system."

The result, Greco says, saved Weingart time and money by cutting down the number of steps that shelter staff had to take to do intake and reducing the number of data entry mistakes they made.

"Those errors result in billing errors," and those billing errors and mistakes can result in a place like The Weingart Center losing millions a year in funding opportunities.

It also made the information on how many beds the center had at any given time easily accessible, so that Get Help's app could make them available to service providers on the streets looking to get people housed.

"it's certainly, you know, added a lot of simplicity in our lives," Murray says.

From Pilot Test to a Citywide Crisis

An estimated 82,955 people fell into homelessness during 2019 in L.A County, and an estimated 52,689 people found the way out of homelessness in that time, according to the county's most recent data.Photo courtesy of Get Help

In late 2019, Get Help worked out a pilot program with a small faction of LAPD officers who patrol Skid Row and other areas to assist with routine clean ups of homeless encampments.

The officers in LAPD's Homeless Outreach and Proactive Engagement (HOPE) team downloaded the Get Help app and used it to direct the homeless folks they encountered to services in the area.

"The response was overwhelmingly positive," Greco says, adding that some officers reported it had changed the dynamic between some of their patrol and homeless in the area. Officers had real-time information they could offer to homeless folks, and their role went beyond enforcement to being able to offer assistance.

After six months, the plan was to expand the app's use in the city, when an even larger crisis hit.

"We had just got through a successful pilot with L.A. (city) and we're talking about expanding it, we were doing work on expanding to a different additional shelters, (and) we were starting conversations with L.A. County," Greco says, "And COVID-19 hit."

The city settled on an emergency plan to house vulnerable homeless people in recreation centers and other city facilities that had closed due to the pandemic.

Jimmy Kim oversees emergency operations for Los Angeles's recreation and parks department. He was tasked with creating the shelters, developing a system for keeping track of its inhabitants, and keeping them safe.

"The systems that we're using are so archaic," Kim says. "You know that saying, 'time is money', right?"

At first the city relied on regular manual headcounts, pen and paper and Google docs to keep a tally of those staying at its sites. It quickly found that process was inefficient.

"And so we came across (the app) in the mayor's office," says Kim. "They actually introduced us to the folks over at Get Help as part of a pilot program."

The app allowed them to streamline the process, and provided the mayor's office with real time information on the number and location of beds occupied.

"The quicker we could get them (registered), the quicker we could get people in," Kim says. "And then the less time they have to spend on doing registration, the more time they could spend on doing more important things."

The system proved a success, allowing Kim to keep track of registrations and discharges at the 24 shelters the agency oversaw, and allowing his staff of around 94 employees access to real-time data on who was where.

"I actually want to take that and use it for our normal shelters as well because it'll help us streamline that process and get real time usable data," Kim says. "You know, literally at the tip of your fingertips."

The department is now thinking about configuring the app to do contract tracing for shelter residents who come down with COVID-19, and it's thinking about expanding beyond the homeless emergency function, to other emergencies that require rapid sheltering — such as wildfires and earthquakes.

"Now, we're having those conversations," says Kim, "because I think it will help us streamline and get data a lot quicker… And if you have real-time data, you can make better decisions that way."

Meanwhile, Get Help is available to individuals, organizations and outreach workers in Apple's App Store and Google Play. His team is working with several large local shelters and sober living facilities and the county to expand the data available in Get Help's app that can be used by families, street teams and concerned residents looking for immediate help.

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LA Tech Week 2025: Sunday’s Event Lineup

Here's the Sunday, October 19th lineup for LA Tech Week 2025, organized by location so you can easily explore events that fit your goals and schedule. Dive in and see what’s happening near you!

ARTS DISTRICT

3:00 PM

BEL AIR

3:00 PM – 7:00 PM

BURBANK

6:30 PM – 9:30 PM

CULVER CITY

9:00 AM – 5:00 PM

4:30 PM – 7:30 PM

INGLEWOOD

10:00 AM – 2:00 PM

  • Spinovation: The Future Is Femme, The Future is Frequency: See Details Here
    Sonder Impact, Black Women Spin, Sip & Sonder

KOREATOWN

12:00 PM – 3:00 PM

MARINA DEL REY

12:00 PM

  • Sunday Tech Brunch
    Sawubona

MID CITY

9:00 AM – 11:00 AM

  • Women in Cleantech Hike and Network: See Details Here
    Women in Cleantech and Sustainability

SANTA MONICA

9:00 AM

10:00 AM

3:45 PM

4:00 PM – 7:30 PM

  • OFF THE HOOK Santa Monica Seafood Festival: See Details Here
    Spin PR Group, City of Santa Monica, Tech St.

6:00 PM

7:00 PM

  • Pritam: A Musical Legend - Live in Concert: See Details Here
    American South Asian Network

7:00 PM

  • Building AI workflow editor in React with Workflow Builder SDK: See Details Here
    Workflow Builder

7:00 PM

8:00 PM

  • Unlock Apple's Corporate Advantage for your Startup!: See Details Here
    iStore by St. Moritz

TOPANGA CANYON

3:00 PM

  • Dreamore Hike and Picnic: LA Tech Week: *Invite Only*
    Dreamore

VENICE

10:00 AM – 12:00 PM

  • Coffee, Walk, and Schmooze: See Details Here
    JFE (Jews For Entrepreneurship) Network

VIRTUAL (LA)

10:00 AM

  • Level Up with LinkedIn: A Student’s Guide to Networking & Opportunities (Virtual Event): See Details Here
    FIMAC

10:00 AM

WEST ADAMS

1:00 PM – 3:00 PM

For updates or more event information, visit the official Tech Week calendar.

Enjoy LA Tech Week 2025!

Download the dot.LA App


LA Tech Week 2025: Saturday’s Event Lineup

Here's the Saturday, October 18th lineup for LA Tech Week 2025, organized by location so you can easily explore events that fit your goals and schedule. Dive in and see what’s happening near you!

BEVERLY HILLS

2:00 PM

CENTURY CITY

7:00 PM – 10:00 PM

CULVER CITY

9:00 AM – 5:00 PM

10:00 AM – 11:30 AM

1:00 PM

DTLA

7:00 PM

  • {MiniMax x Nakid x SkyPortalx}: TECH/MOTION/MUSIC/ART: See Details Here
    MiniMax (Hailuo AI)

10:00 PM – 2:00 AM

EL SEGUNDO

10:00 AM

  • Venture on the Green: *Invite Only*
    BLCK VC

4:00 PM

INGLEWOOD

7:00 PM

  • Valar Atomics, Durin and Discipulus Ventures - Night With A Nuclear Reactor: See Details Here
    Valar Atomics, Durin, Discipulus Ventures

MARINA DEL REY

8:30 AM

12:00 PM – 3:00 PM

5:00 PM

  • LOST iN Sunset Sail: Navigating the Tides of the Creator Economy & Media: See Details Here
    LOST iN

PASADENA

9:00 AM

PLAYA VISTA

2:00 PM – 4:00 PM

SANTA MONICA

7:00 AM

9:00 AM

  • Pedal & Network: Tech Cyclists @ LA Tech Week 🚵: See Details Here
    Instafill.ai

9:30 AM

  • Getty Center Guided Tour & (Optional) Photography Scavenger Hunt: See Details Here
    NEW MOON Impact Productions

10:30 AM – 11:30 AM

11:00 AM – 2:15 PM

12:00 PM – 5:00 PM

1:00 PM – 5:00 PM

1:30 PM

  • Self-Defense in Court and the Streets: See Details Here
    Santa Monica Striking, Luri Inc.

2:00 PM

  • SMARTUP 500: THE FIRST AT TECH WEEK LA - Launching the world’s first Startup Ranking: See Details Here
    Smart Times

2:00 PM

  • NLPs (No Lame Panels) The Creator X Founder Rooftop Party: See Details Here
    Startup Village, Sanctuary

3:00 PM – 4:00 PM

4:00 PM – 6:30 PM

  • Just Do It?: Helping Founders Perform Like Olympians: See Details Here
    Elite Psychology Group

5:00 PM

6:00 PM

6:00 PM – 9:00 PM

6:00 PM

6:00 PM – 9:00 PM

  • The Future of Hospitality: Poetry, Provenance & Passports: See Details Here
    Villa Kitchen, Airble, We Speak Dance, Techstars San Francisco

7:00 PM

  • 🚀 Investor x Founder Open Mic Pitches: See Details Here
    Feathr, Los Angeles Fun Events

7:00 PM

  • Life is a Pitch - LA Edition: *Invite Only*
    DeepMyst

TOPANGA CANYON

5:00 PM – 8:30 PM

  • Walk&Jam: Use AI to make art while hiking Topanga Canyon: See Details Here
    Formhaus llc, Wonderland Immersive Design

TORRANCE

1:00 PM – 4:00 PM

  • Crunches & Conversations Presented by The Differentials and KIS Training Studios: See Details Here
    The Differentials, KIS Training Studios

VENICE

1:00 PM – 4:30 PM

  • Beyond the Language Barrier: Exploring AI's Next Frontier: See Details Here
    Medusa AI

VENICE BEACH

8:00 AM – 12:00 PM

  • SŨRFED Club @ Venice Beach: Founders, Creators, Investors share the waves: See Details Here
    SŨRFED Club, Go Vitamins

WEST ADAMS

9:30 AM – 10:45 AM

  • Funders Shaping Democracy, AI & Media: See Details Here
    New Media Ventures, New Rising Ventures

WEST HOLLYWOOD

4:00 PM

6:00 PM – 8:00 PM

9:30 PM

  • Vibe Check Comedy Show, Tech Week Edition! @ Hollywood Improv: See Details Here
    Vibe Check Comedy

For updates or more event information, visit the official Tech Week calendar.

Enjoy LA Tech Week 2025!

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LA Tech Week 2025: Friday’s Event Lineup

Here's the Friday, October 17th lineup for LA Tech Week 2025, organized by location so you can easily explore events that fit your goals and schedule. Dive in and see what’s happening near you!

ARTS DISTRICT

8:30 AM – 12:00 PM

  • Power Day: Ideas, Pitches, Connections: See Details Here
    Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator (LACI)

6:00 PM

  • WEB3 GAMING IS DEAD - Happy Hour: See Details Here
    Plassa Capital, Yee-Haw Monster Trucks

BEVERLY HILLS

10:00 AM – 11:00 AM

1:00 PM – 2:00 PM

2:00 PM – 3:00 PM

3:00 PM – 4:00 PM

4:00 PM

6:00 PM – 9:00 PM

  • So you went viral, Now what? (pt II): See Details Here
    Verci, Study Fetch, TechSpace

8:00 PM

  • Private Pool: GP x LP x FO: *Invite Only*
    Visionlist Commons , Bay Area Innovest

BRENTWOOD

8:00 AM

  • Founders & Investors Hike: See Details Here
    Salehpour Legal, Technology Founders of America

CARSON

11:45 AM

  • Lightspeed x SVB Porsche Experience: *Invite Only*
    Lightspeed Venture Partners, SVB

CULVER CITY

8:00 AM – 6:00 PM

11:00 AM

1:00 PM

  • Surf Parks & Wave Pools: From Doja Cat to Mark Zuckerberg: See Details Here
    Surflytics

8:00 PM – 12:00 AM

EL SEGUNDO

11:30 AM – 2:00 PM

5:00 PM – 8:00 PM

HOLLYWOOD

10:00 AM

  • AI, Revenue, and Reality: How Fortune 500s Work With Startups That Ship: See Details Here
    Sunrise AI, OpenTable

12:00 PM – 2:00 PM

  • Unplugged: LA Tech Week Recharge Experience with TAY × Checked Out: See Details Here
    TAY Fitness, Checked Out

9:00 PM

INGLEWOOD

8:00 AM

  • TCSI Presents: Caffeine & Connections: See Details Here
    The Cyber Security Intellects Nonprofit

LONG BEACH

7:00 AM

MALIBU

10:00 AM

  • Great Leaders Podcast & Profiles: See Details Here
    NEW MOON Impact Productions, Origin Studios

12:30 PM

MARINA DEL REY

9:00 AM

  • Keeping Your Freedom as a Founder: Real Talk on Funding: See Details Here
    Lighter Capital

10:00 AM – 1:00 PM

  • D-Wave Research Day & Hackathon!: See Details Here
    USC Information Sciences Institute, D-Wave

4:00 PM – 6:00 PM

  • The Sky is Not the Limit: All About Aerospace: See Details Here
    Sunstone Management, USC Viterbi Startup Garage

PASADENA

10:00 AM – 1:00 PM

11:30 AM – 1:30 PM

  • Deep Tech Entrepreneurship Pillars of Pasadena Tech: See Details Here
    Innovate Pasadena, Pasadena SBDC, City of Pasadena

PLAYA VISTA

9:00 AM

12:00 PM – 2:00 PM

  • Vision to Venture - AI Media Showcase powered by Google AI: See Details Here
    Google

SANTA MONICA

7:00 AM – 8:30 AM

  • Signal Run : RTC x Wildwood VC: See Details Here
    Run Tech Club, Wildwood Ventures

7:30 AM

8:45 AM – 10:45 AM

9:00 AM – 11:00 AM

  • Slash Burn Rates & Scale Your Startup: See Details Here
    Arizona Commerce Authority (ACA)

9:00 AM

  • Driving a Digital Ecology Relay: What is at Stake: See Details Here
    The PORT GLOBAL, GLOBAL PORTAL INSTITUTE

9:30 AM – 11:30 AM

10:00 AM – 1:00 PM

  • The Enduring Value of Inclusive Capital: See Details Here
    Founders Registry. Nervana

10:00 AM – 12:00 PM

10:30 AM

11:30 AM – 1:00 PM

  • Advisors to Investors Lunch: Venture Capital for enterprise leaders: See Details Here
    Collinear Capital, Worlds

12:00 PM

  • Powerhouse Capital & a16z speedrun Investor Lunch Mixer: See Details Here
    Powerhouse Capital, a16z, speedrun

2:00 PM

  • Where Robotics Meets Heart - Embedding Family Values in a Future with AI: See Details Here
    Trove, Puerto Rico Blockchain Association, MindfulBytes

2:00 PM

3:00 PM

3:00 PM

3:00 PM

  • Workshop: Create An Enterprise Chatbot and Unlock the 70% of Data Data You’re Not Using: See Details Here
    Aparavi

4:00 PM

5:00 PM – 10:00 PM

5:30 PM

5:30 PM – 9:30 PM

6:00 PM – 8:30 PM

  • USC Alumni Founders & Investors: See Details Here
    USC Alumni Entrepreneurship Network, Techstars

6:00 PM

  • Social Currency Series/Greenlit presents PitchPop: See Details Here
    Social Currency Series, Greenlit

6:00 PM – 9:00 PM

6:30 PM

6:30 PM – 10:00 PM

6:30 PM

  • Lets get the LA Bioeconomy brewing: See Details Here
    Founders, Friends & Fermentation, Saku Biosciences

7:00 PM – 11:30 PM

7:00 PM – 10:00 PM

7:00 PM – 10:00 PM

7:00 PM

7:00 PM

  • Liquid Equity 2: The Premiere Gathering for Founders, Creator
    Coeus Collective

7:00 PM

7:00 PM

  • For the Love of Tech | Speed Dating for Tech Professionals: See Details Here
    Feathr, Los Angeles Fun Events

7:00 PM

SOUTH LA

3:00 PM

TORRANCE

9:00 AM – 11:00 AM

  • The Future of Space & Security Panel: See Details Here
    Northwood Space, Anduril Industries, Impulse Space, Astranis

VENICE

9:00 AM – 10:45 AM

9:00 AM – 11:30 AM

11:00 AM

11:30 AM – 2:30 PM

12:30 PM

  • Creative Partners: Human + AI Storytelling: See Details Here
    Othelia, Primordial Soup

2:00 PM – 3:45 PM

5:00 PM

  • EarthHouse: Critical Minerals, Mobility & Modern Power: See Details Here
    The Strategye Group, Alpha Sierra One

6:00 PM – 9:00 PM

6:00 PM

  • Pizza+Soda: *Invite Only*
    Schmoozd , The KINN

7:00 PM

VENICE BEACH

2:00 PM – 6:30 PM

5:00 PM

8:30 PM – 2:00 AM

VIRTUAL (LA)

2:30 PM – 4:00 PM

3:00 PM

  • Government of Alberta: ProcurementAsCode // Done in 60 Seconds: See Details Here
    Government of Alberta

4:00 PM

  • Stop Hitting Yourself 🥊: See Details Here
    Stop Hitting Yourself, HOWDY, Company Policy, Snowbird Global

WEST HOLLYWOOD

3:00 PM – 6:00 PM

6:00 PM

WESTSIDE

5:00 PM

5:30 PM – 8:30 PM


For updates or more event information, visit the official Tech Week calendar.

Enjoy LA Tech Week 2025!

Download the dot.LA App


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