Abstract In the current Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) survey, emission line galaxies (ELGs) and luminous red galaxies (LRGs) are essential for mapping the dark matter distribution at z ∼ 1. We measure the auto and cross correlation functions of ELGs and LRGs at 0.8 < z ≤ 1.0 from the DESI One-Percent survey. Following Gao et al., we construct the galaxy–halo connections for ELGs and LRGs simultaneously. With the stellar–halo mass relation for the whole galaxy population (i.e., normal galaxies), LRGs can be selected directly by stellar mass, while ELGs can also be selected randomly based on the observed number density of each stellar mass, once the probability P _sat of a satellite galaxy becoming an ELG is determined. We demonstrate that the observed small scale clustering prefers a halo mass-dependent P _sat model rather than a constant. With this model, we can well reproduce the auto correlations of LRGs and the cross correlations between LRGs and ELGs at r _p > 0.1 Mpc h ⁻¹. We can also reproduce the auto correlations of ELGs at r _p > 0.3 Mpc h ⁻¹ (s > 1 Mpc h ⁻¹) in real (redshift) space. Although our model has only seven parameters, we show that it can be extended to higher redshifts and reproduces the observed auto correlations of ELGs in the whole range of 0.8 < z ≤ 1.6, which enables us to generate a lightcone ELG mock for DESI. With the above model, we further derive halo occupation distributions for ELGs, which can be used to produce ELG mocks in coarse simulations without resolving subhalos.