Running the gamut of Colorado Springs' efforts to end homelessness

Apr. 16—Twenty-eight of the 100 beds at the county Poor Farm were occupied when Mary Lynn Sheetz arrived in Colorado Springs half a century ago to dedicate her life's work to people lacking a place to call home.

Sheetz slept there one night in 1973 to better understand what the impoverished, mentally afflicted and drug addicted residents were experiencing.

"At that time, the discussion was about what do we do with the county Poor Farm because we don't need that much space," she said.

By the next decade, continued low usage and deteriorating buildings led El Paso County commissioners to decide there wasn't enough demand for such a facility anymore.

The working, 5-acre farm and ranch was built in 1900, at the beginning of the Progressive Era, a time for social reform that encompassed public health, safety and welfare.

The property on the city's west side where Bear Creek Park is today included a two-story residential building, outbuildings that served as dorms and a pest house, where those infected with contagious diseases lived. Residents who were able to work were given jobs.

County officials shuttered the operation in 1984 and razed the buildings.

But it soon became apparent that closing the Poor Farm left a void in the community, said Sheetz.

Colorado Springs had few options for people who didn't have anywhere to live.

There were six single room occupancy dwellings for rent downtown, a charitable organization provided some housing, and low-budget motel rooms could be leased weekly or monthly, the same as now.

However, there was enough cheap housing that people could be spared from vagrancy, Sheetz said.

In the 123 years since the Poor Farm began providing basic needs, worth and dignity for the community's destitute, El Paso County has created a large system to track, feed, house and outfit the homeless, as well as help people find jobs, attend to their medical and mental health problems, get sober and work toward a self-sustaining life.

Mayor John Suthers refers to today's complicated network as the "industrial homeless complex."

Under his eight-year regime that's ending with a May 16 runoff election, Suthers has incorporated a "kind of tough love" method of managing the homeless population, the visible presence of whom has been a top complaint of residents for years.

"Having talked to a lot of mayors, I think it's the only approach to take — encourage people to seek shelter, here are the services available, here's substance abuse treatment, here's how to move into transitional and permanent supportive housing," Suthers said. "We want to help anybody who wants help in terms of shelter and services."

The model works, he said, since Colorado Springs has reduced its population of chronically homeless people, those who live on the streets for extended time, by nearly half over the past five years.

Concurrently, in 2018, Suthers set a five-year plan to add an average of 1,000 affordable housing units each year through construction, preservation or creation of more housing opportunities.

That number has been realized, city officials say, with the five-year plan ending this year.

The direction moving forward will depend on what the new mayor — who will either be former county commissioner and current City Councilor Wayne Williams or the city's former small business development administrator Yemi Mobolade — wants.

"That's the kind of thing a new mayor could continue on, change it, raise it," said city spokesman Max D'Onofrio.

Or eliminate it.

City staff want to not only continue Suthers' affordable housing plan but also expand the number of units generated annually, said Crystal Karr, the city's homelessness prevention and response coordinator.

"We have to have affordable housing for people who have experienced homelessness to move into," she said. "There has to be a place for them to go."

Housing for those who have no or little money has worsened since 2018, she said.

"Five years ago, there was more readily affordable housing — it would take somebody maybe three months to get housed, and now we're seeing it's taking six to nine months," Karr said.

The longer people stay in an emergency shelter or live in a tent or a car or on someone's couch, the more difficult it is on them physically, emotionally and economically, she said.

The active waiting list at Greccio Housing, which manages 652 affordable units across 26 properties, tops 1,690 people, said executive director Lee Patke.

"I was shocked that was the number," he said, "because so many people have made such good strides in the area of affordable housing in the last couple of years. This demonstrates the need is greater and greater."

A couple of years ago, Greccio had 690 people on its active waiting list, he said.

"This tells me we need to continue and redouble our efforts," Patke said, adding that personal income also needs to keep pace with cost-of-living and inflation so that people can move up from needing affordable housing.

The turnover rate for Greccio properties has fallen from 50% to under 25%, he said, indicating people are staying longer in affordable housing than in the past.

The city is short 12,000 units of "workforce housing," for lower wage-earners, according to an estimate given at a Feb. 28 candidates' forum for what had been 12 mayoral hopefuls.

Colorado Springs' new mayor will hear from every city department head about what they're working on and what their plans are for the future, Karr said. City staff will obtain feedback from the mayor, then, the mayor and staff will work together to "incorporate the new mayor's vision to collaborate and do what is best for the city," she said.

Much of the $5.6 million in funding the city allocated this year to be spent on homelessness prevention and services is federal dollars, D'Onofrio said.

At the affordable housing candidates' forum in February, hosted by Pikes Peak Habitat for Humanity, Mobolade said as mayor he would support public-private partnerships and possibly start a gap fund for the "missing middle"— employees who earn too much for government assistance but too little to qualify for mortgages.

Williams said if he's elected mayor, he would eliminate city sales taxes for affordable housing and utilities connection fees, allow more flexible zoning in new communities to facilitate a variety of home types, and work with the private sector to increase the number of homes available for workforce and military families.

Giant homeless campus

The city's current approach to homelessness began under Mayor Steve Bach's reign from 2011 to 2015. He was the first "strong mayor," meaning the mayor functions as the city's CEO who's in charge of the administration and its structure and staff.

In October 2013, Bach and his wife, Suzi, held a press conference to call on developers to build a giant homeless campus.

"We are going to solve homelessness in this city while I'm mayor. Period," Bach said at the time.

He wanted a one-stop shop, where homeless people had access to overnight beds, meals, physical and mental health care, employment assistance, substance abuse treatment, laundry and shower facilities and other services.

The idea had been raised in the early 2000s, said Bob Holmes, former chief executive of Homeward Pikes Peak.

A complex was slated to be built in the Mill Street neighborhood, where the American Red Cross already operated an emergency shelter on South Sierra Madre Street. That facility remains under the local Salvation Army Corps and late last year became a family-only homeless shelter.

El Pomar Foundation committed $5 million to build a consolidated campus. However, "When Mill Street neighbors got wind of the proposed project, they took El Pomar to court to try to stop it because nobody had consulted with them," Holmes said.

El Pomar won the legal battle but said in light of neighborhood sentiment, they would not fund such a development. Instead, they left the $5 million grant on the table, and a committee set five goals for the money: Improve the Marian House soup kitchen, upgrade the existing shelter in the Mill Street neighborhood, convert an old motel and restaurant on Wahsatch Avenue into affordable housing, start a Homeless Management Information System to electronically keep track of where homeless people were using services, and establish a coordinating agency for homeless services, known as Homeward Pikes Peak.

Those goals were realized, said Holmes, who began working for Homeward Pikes Peak in 2003.

But other problems cropped up. A proliferation of urban camping led elected city officials to ban the activity.

In 2009, the American Civil Liberties Union sued the city and overturned its no-camping ordinance, saying the only way the city could ticket someone for camping was if there were enough shelter beds available to accommodate everyone who was homeless.

"As soon as they lifted that ban, over 600 people came into the creekbed behind The Antlers downtown," Holmes said.

The police chief designated three officers as a Homeless Outreach Team, who went into camps and would call families of people to ask them if they would welcome them home. In two years, 165 homeless people were sent back to their relatives, Holmes said.

"We did get a lot of people off the streets," he said. "We just don't have that personalized service like we used to."

While the Homeless Outreach Team still exists, their work has been modified to enforce camp cleanups, ordinances that ban sitting or lying in certain places and panhandling on medians, Holmes said.

The long-envisioned campus for homeless services materialized at Springs Rescue Mission, which in 2021 completed a five-stage, $18 million expansion at 5 W. Las Vegas St., occupying six blocks south of downtown Colorado Springs.

The city allocated about $5.7 million federal grants toward the expansion between 2015 and 2020, according to a distribution list.

Creating at least 450 emergency shelter beds at Springs Rescue Mission and 176 family beds and 12 for military veterans at the Salvation Army's family shelter means Colorado Springs legally can enforce camping bans, which the city re-enacted in 2016. Also, an initial no sit-no-lie ordinance passed in 2015 and expanded in 2022 to prohibit anyone from sitting, lying, kneeling or reclining on sidewalks, trails, alleys and other rights of way.

Need for transitional housing

But the strategy has come at a detriment to other organizations and the city's desperate need for housing for the poor, some say.

Other projects have received far less in federal grants for programs such as a respite care center for convalescing homeless people, street outreach, the homeless management system, eviction prevention, a teen hangout and other client services —a point of contention among some service providers.

"I wish there was a magic wand for funding that an equal amount of money that has been spent on increasing the size of our emergency shelter system had been matched with an equal investment in transitional housing and the creation of new affordable housing to address homelessness, because it has not been dollar-for-dollar," said Beth Roalstad, executive director of Homeward Pikes Peak for the past six years.

The city needs more apartment units that accept government-funded rental assistance vouchers, she said.

"It's like finding the needle in the haystack because of the cost of housing and our limited market," Roalstad said. "Vouchers give us time to help people become healthy, employable and self-sufficient so they end participation in a government-supported program."

Also needed is somewhere for disabled homeless people to go, she said.

A new committee is studying that, said Karr, the city's homelessness prevention coordinator.

Local shelters do not have nurses on staff, so people who cannot take care of themselves or are not ambulatory are not accepted at Springs Rescue Mission, for example.

Sheetz, whose late husband, Steve Handen, started the city's first soup kitchen by feeding people from his home and then from the church he pastored, thinks society has chosen to tear down much of the low-income housing stock and essentially create homelessness.

"The problem, as I see it, is not the homeless, it's wealth," said Sheetz, who works with housing ex-offenders, refugees and other homeless people.

"We're so far into the area of being OK with homelessness that we're also getting people who are homeless OK with that notion. I see us supporting homelessness more than we support living indoors."

Sheetz doesn't cast blame or think it's any particular group's fault that homeless people receive sleeping bags, jackets, dog food, clean clothes, tents, stoves, food and other supplies "far more than we subsidize apartments."

"Without meaning to, we've built a society where homelessness is thinkable, and it's also thinkable to the homeless," Sheetz said.

It's a complex problem, Roalstad said, with complex solutions.