Doug Orange lived on the streets for five years before he found a reason not to. He found someone who believed in him, treated him with dignity and helped him see there was reason for hope.

It worked for him 20 years ago and he's convinced it will work for homeless people at the Beaches now. Orange and his work partner, Toni Weber, are the Beaches team for the Homeless Outreach Project Expansion (HOPE) program.

On Jan. 22, they began building relationships with homeless people in the woods, underpasses and abandoned buildings at the Beaches, from the St. Johns County line north to Hanna Park in Mayport. They encourage people to accept free services at the I.M. Sulzbacher Center in Jacksonville, which can help set them up with a stable income, housing and medical and mental health care.

The Beaches area doesn't have a homeless shelter, but it does have Mission House, a daytime facility in Jacksonville Beach that provides meals, showers, clothing and medical clinics for homeless people. Rather than duplicate services at the Beaches, advocates for the homeless want to connect homeless people with Sulzbacher.

The Beaches HOPE team is funded by a $200,000 Bank of America Neighborhood Excellence Initiative grant to the Sulzbacher Center through a partnership with Beaches Emergency Assistance Ministry, or BEAM. It's modeled after a similar HOPE team in Jacksonville.

Orange, who grew up in Jacksonville, became homeless at age 21 after his father's fatal car accident. He spent five years moving from town to town and recounting his mother's criticism that he was the cause of his father's crash. Then he encountered a straight-talking counselor at an Orlando homeless shelter who helped him see that wherever Doug went, he took Doug with him.

"I realized I was the issue," Orange said.

When asked what he needed to get himself off the street, he replied, "a girlfriend."

The case manager chuckled, but Orange said he really meant it.

"I needed someone to believe in me," he said.

With the counselor's help, he worked on building his self-esteem. Then a friend's aunt opened her home to him. Three months later, he met the woman who would become his wife. They now own a home on Jacksonville's Northside.

Once he stabilized his life, Orange made a promise to himself: "I was going to do anything I could to make a difference."

He got involved with Sulzbacher and worked a year with the Jacksonville HOPE team.

His partner on the Beaches HOPE team, Weber, was the director of the former Beaches Neighborhood Partnership, a community-based program that focused on protecting children. She also served three years in the U.S. Army.

If the Beaches HOPE team encounters a homeless person who is a victim of domestic or sexual violence, or someone who has military experience, Weber takes the lead. If they meet someone who challenges them because "they don't know what it's like to be homeless," Orange takes over.

"You never know what it takes to engage," Weber said. "It's all about being a team."

They carry ice water, a few sandwiches, blankets and toiletries in the back of their green van, which was purchased with $30,000 in contributions from the three Beaches cities. Every Thursday, they bring along a nurse and psychiatrist with experience in street medicine.

Their first goal is to establish common ground with homeless people, Weber said. Don't assume anything. Don't judge. Treat them with respect and dignity.

One of their first stops Tuesday was in downtown Jacksonville Beach, where they saw a man in overalls sitting on the grass with a woman. The man, known as Michael, pulled a pink doctor's slip from his pocket and said he needed a ride to Shands hospital in Jacksonville the next day for surgery to remove a tumor behind his right eye.

Noticing his somewhat slurred speech and glazed eyes, Orange casually asked how many drinks he'd had. Michael raised two fingers like a peace sign and defended why he was drinking at 11 a.m.

"It's just solid pain," he said, squinting and tapping his eye socket.

He followed Orange to the HOPE van across the street and explained that he was a lieutenant commander who served three tours of duty in Vietnam. Orange gave him a bus ticket to get to the hospital.

"God bless you man," Michael said. "At least I can get down there."

Michael's friend, a woman known as Cherokee, asked for a blanket. She said she's been homeless since 1982, when she divorced her husband. Orange wrapped a blanket around her neck and she smiled and broke into a song in the parking lot. "Let it be, let it be, let it be. ..." Michael and a homeless man on a bicycle who had asked for a pair of socks joined in the singing.

"That was one of our good, light moments," Orange said later. Weber said Cherokee could be really nice one day and chew you out the next.

They hope the rapport they build with people like Michael and Cherokee will evolve into something longer lasting. In their first month, the Beaches HOPE team linked six homeless people with Sulzbacher. But HOPE team members in Jacksonville have learned that it can take several visits, even months or years, before a homeless person will accept care at Sulzbacher.

"One of the key elements of this is patience," said Mission House Executive Director Jan Flager. "This is something that has tremendous potential. But there is no quick fix to homelessness. They have to build trust. They build relationships. It takes time to do that."

Jacksonville Beach is ready for some success. After a decade of enforcing tough laws and policies on aggressive panhandling, drinking in public, trespassing and camping in public, city officials are willing to try a new approach.

A 2006 Jacksonville Beach police study showed that several homeless people had each been arrested about 100 times on misdemeanor charges. A day or two later, they would be back on the streets.

Advocates for the homeless say it costs about $764 to book someone into jail.

"It's certainly true that you can't arrest your way out of the problem," said Jacksonville Beach Mayor Fland Sharp. "You also have to have an approach to help people. If they can just do one or two a month, we come out way ahead."

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