CAHOOTS (crisis response)

CAHOOTS (Crisis Assistance Helping Out On The Streets) is a mental-health-crisis intervention program in Eugene, Oregon, which has handled some lower-risk emergency calls involving mental illness and homelessness since 1989. This makes it the earliest, or one of the earliest, Mobile Crisis Teams.

In most American cities, police have been responding to such calls and at least 25% of people killed in police encounters had been suffering from serious mental illness. Many cities in the US and elsewhere have been considering and implementing implementing something like CAHOOTS. In 2015, Stockholm a similar concept was considered a success. In early 2020, Denver started a similar program. After the George Floyd protests that year, several hundred cities in the US interested in implementing similar programs requested information from CAHOOTS.

In 2021, the US enacted legislation to cover 85% of the expenses for three years for Mobile Crisis Teams, directing $1 billion to the effort. By the end of the year, many cities were starting such programs, such as Minneapolis' Behavioral Crisis Response. By 2024, most US states had multiple cities implementing such programs, or had them available state-wide.