Homeless man sleeps on a bench covered with his jacket in a public park during the day.
[This article originally appeared in the Denver Gazette as part of a series on homelessness in Colorado.]
Colorado Springs leaders have been touting their success in reducing homelessness for several years, largely based on data from a survey that’s usually conducted in January.
On a select night and day, industry staff and volunteers scour places homeless people congregate, such as tent camps, vehicles, bridges, emergency shelters, soup kitchens and libraries. They count and collect information about homeless people for a survey that’s required for communities to receive federal funding for services and programs.
The point-in-time numbers reported to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development show a 17% decrease over the past five years in El Paso County’s total homeless population, from a high of 1,562 in 2019 to the 2023 count of 1,302. That’s across all categories and age groups, from people living on the streets to those in transitional housing.
The county also hit what officials call a good high this year of moving 740 people into permanent housing, which leaders say tells them their methods are working.
“We are doing a lot better than most, mostly because city government is allowing us to do our jobs, which is enforcing our laws, while at the same time trying to get people resources and working with them to get housing,” said Colorado Springs police Sgt. Olav Chaney, who heads the city’s Homeless Outreach Team. “We deal with the issues and don’t let them get worse and worse.”
Colorado Springs police and fire departments receive city funding to send teams onto the streets to enforce local ordinances, assist with camp cleanups, provide supplies, such as water and socks, add names to a housing list or get people into a shelter.
Colorado Springs Mayor Yemi Mobolade, who won the seat in June, also thinks the city and county are “doing really well,” and the numbers are “trending in the right direction.”
Over the last several years, El Paso County’s decreasing homeless population has represented a different trajectory than most other communities along the Front Range, according to a study released in February by the Common Sense Institute, a Denver-based fiscal and economic research organization.
But Colorado Springs leaders say they realize homelessness isn’t close to being solved or eradicated.
“We want to do better and optimize our systems and decrease homelessness,” said Crystal Karr, homelessness prevention and response coordinator.
Mobolade wants to see a greater emphasis on and more investment in mental health, citing a 2019 study from the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless that cited 71% of the homeless people in the state report having mental health problems.
The city’s proposed 2024 budget includes full funding of the Colorado Springs Fire Department’s Homeless Outreach Program, which this year was partially grant-funded. This year’s expense of $403,000 will grow by $234,000 for the team that provides resources and assistance with obtaining medical and mental care and housing.
And, under the preliminary budget for 2024, the police department’s Homeless Outreach Team also will receive continued funding, which in 2023 was $2.8 million. The city also will kick in $500,000 toward shelter beds, up slightly from this year’s $487,000.
Issues related to homelessness remain the top complaint the city receives, Karr said.
One of the complaints — the idea that Denver sends homeless people to Colorado Springs — is inaccurate, Mobolade said. Studies show 90% of people who are homeless in Colorado Springs were living in Colorado Springs before they were priced out of the market or had some extenuating circumstance that led to a loss of housing, he said.
The city’s strategy is what Mobolade calls an “all-hands-on-deck” multi-faceted approach to homelessness, using the industry’s best practices across multiple service providers and agencies.
“The issues become very political. It’s easy for cities to make decisions that are politically based versus what’s the best solution,” he said.
“We’re embracing a lot of practices that other cities only lean in on one or another — permanent supportive housing, transitional housing, preventive work cleanups, outreach teams. It’s a holistic approach with different pathways, and we don’t necessarily say ‘housing first.’”
The contrast in the three cities’ philosophical approaches to homelessness is palpable.
In Denver, undergirding Mayor Mike Johnston’s promise to end homelessness is an approach popular among the city’s homeless advocacy groups: “housing first.” The idea is to respond to an individual’s most acute need first, which is housing, and then offer other services later. That is, housing is offered without preconditions, such as treatment or work.
Aurora, on the other hand, took notes from strategies used in Houston, Texas, and borrowed from “work-first” and “treatment-first” models by providing anyone in need with emergency service but offering more robust services to people who are participating in the workforce and receiving any behavioral health treatment they may need.
Of Colorado’s major largest cities, Denver saw the biggest increase in the number of homeless people — 5,818 as of January, up from 4,794 last year, according to a point-in-time count that offers a single night’s snapshot of the crisis back in January.
By comparison, Aurora’s homeless population stood at 572 in the same survey, down from 612 the year before.
And among Colorado’s three biggest cities, Denver is spending hundreds of millions more.
Mary Stegner, executive director of Partners In Housing, which offers transitional housing and recovery programs, agrees that housing first is not a model that works for everyone.
“It’s not the overall Band Aid that’s needed for everything with homelessness,” she said. “You have to look at everything that works.”
But some people believe getting people into housing before addressing other problems, such as substance abuse, is key.
Studies show that “street outreach coupled with permanent supportive housing is the best way to address homelessness in a community,” said Beth Roalstad, executive director of Homeward Pikes Peak, which has nearly 200 units of permanent supportive housing and recovery programs for adults, families, pregnant women and veterans.
Last year, an outreach team of three employees, who go into camps every weekday, helped people in 61 households to stay overnight at an emergency shelter for the first time, and of those, the team assisted 33 in moving into permanent supportive housing, she said.
“Maybe they didn’t know they were eligible, they may have had resistance in the past, they may not have trusted the system,” she said.
Colorado Springs has three permanent supportive housing complexes primarily for chronically homeless people, who have at least one disability and who have been homeless for an extended time, to move from the streets into an apartment.
There are 65 units at Greenway Flats on the property of Springs Rescue Mission, operated by a Christian organization; 50 units at Freedom Springs, a Volunteers of America-run complex for homeless military veterans; and Homeward Pikes Peak’s The Commons, which opened earlier this year with 50 units for single adults, families and veterans.
“(But) the openings are few,” Roalstad said. “There aren’t a lot of ways for someone who’s sleeping outside or in their car to get into the best kind of stable housing.”
The Commons had a 95% occupancy rate over its first six months of operation, she said.
Roalstad believes the community sorely lacks the middle ground, transitional supportive housing, which typically is for six to 12 months.
The current waiting list at the transitional program Partners in Housing is 40 families, which Executive Director Mary Stegner said is a lot.
Some residents of the organization’s 68 units that are scattered across town arrive directly from living in shelters or their cars, some flee domestic violence, others have been served eviction notices or have worn out their welcome on couches.
Stegner said 92% of families — of whom, 90% are single moms — who exit the program move into their own stable housing.
“We’re seeing great success right now with adults being able to get good employment that leads to a livable wage, a lot in the medical field with room for advancement,” she said.
Many people mention that one of Colorado Springs’ strengths is that agencies and organizations are willing to work together on projects.
The high level of collaboration in Colorado Springs seems unique in the industry, said Mark Wester, executive director of Embrave, formerly ComCor, which provides housing and programs for people exiting prison or in lieu of incarceration.
“It’s noticeable, and I think the power of collaboration is very helpful to making a positive impact on the challenges of homelessness,” he said.
There are many examples. Stegner’s organization in recent years formed Family Solutions Collaborative, a group of 30 providers working on issues affecting families who need housing, childcare, transportation and food.
The city’s Karr agrees that partnerships are a benefit. One of the city’s goals, she said, is to reduce competition among local agencies for federal funding.
“This isn’t just one problem for one agency or the city,” Karr said. “It’s going to take the city providing resources and all of us looking at best practices, educating the public, listening to service providers so we can be more proactive than reactive.”
Stegner stopped short of saying Colorado Springs is better or worse off in improving homelessness than other communities.
“Every city is struggling. The issue of homelessness is complicated and complex. There’s no one size fits all solution,” she said. “What a homeless vet who’s suffering from PTSD needs is different from what a family who fled domestic violence needs. Using multiple resources and ideas is crucial to really solving homelessness.”
While industry workers often wonder if they’re making a dent, Stegner said she thinks the situation would be much worse without today’s efforts.
The Homeless Outreach Team of the Colorado Springs Police Department oversees cleanups of illegal camps Monday through Friday. Chaney, the sergeant who leads the team, said police give 24-hour advance notice for people to move out but can remove camps in one hour if they are violating the riparian camping ban, which prohibits habitation within 100 feet of a public stream, such as Fountain Creek.
If people don’t comply, they can be cited for illegal camping and littering, Chaney said, and those who have warrants are taken to jail.
“There’s a lot of criminal activity in the homeless community; two to eight times a day we’re making trips to jail with people who have felony or misdemeanor warrants,” he said.
So far this year, about 1,350 camps have been cleaned up, at a cost of $1.32 million, Chaney said, and crews picked up about 469,000 pounds of trash.
“It’s easy to see the cleanups as humane; it’s actually inhumane to allow residents to live in these camps without providing help and options,” Mobolade said. “It’s a public safety risk for disease and health issues.
“It’s a fine line between how we enforce and how we display compassion, and I believe we do that well.”
A new program employs a truck to immediately be dispatched to pick up old mattresses, needles used for drug injections and other refuse that needs quick attention.
Chaney acknowledges that many people who are camping illegally simply move to another spot when they get booted. But even if they are taken to jail for a few days, they are held accountable and have a few days or longer to refocus and take a break from substance use and street life, he said.
“It’s hard, but I think this is the best approach,” Chaney said. “Every day we try to convince these folks to get off the streets, and they say they’ll think about it. There’s plenty of beds at Springs Rescue, but they often don’t want to follow the rules, and they make excuses.”
Some people who are homeless say the rules are unfair, and they are treated poorly.
Cherry Allen, 49, often sleeps by a concrete pillar at an interstate underpass. She’s been homeless off and on since 2016 after divorce, has had both feet amputated in the past two years due to diabetes and uses a wheelchair.
The food at the lowest level at Springs Rescue Mission, which improves when people join one of the shelter’s assistance programs, is inadequate, she said. New animal kennels are often full for large dogs, and disabled people are not given priority, Allen added.
And multiple thefts of her identification have left Allen unable to access many services and get on a housing list, she said.
“We’re not bad people, but all this city wants to do is ticket us, take us to jail, run us out,” Allen said.
Oliver Brooks said negligence, laziness and drug abuse contributed to his predicament.
He moved to town a few months ago, sometimes stays at Springs Rescue Mission and wants to get a job as a dishwasher. He likes the shelter but got thrown out after security found a bottle of wine in his backpack.
“I’m praying every day,” he said. “There’s good in people.”
Anyone who gets off the streets and stays off for one year is treated to a free lunch from Chaney, the police officer. He’s had several people take him up on the offer.
“One guy said he was tired of seeing us (the HOT team), and said he got a place on the westside and a job. Another guy who always slept on a bench said he got a place and people told him he changed for the better. One guy from Greenway Flats wanted Chinese food, so that’s what I got him. A gal, I don’t know how many times we arrested her, finally got off the street a couple of months ago and is doing all right,” he said.
“When they say, ‘I’m ready to get out,’ that’s the biggest win for us.”