In October 2017, with winter fast approaching, Boulder County finally tried a new tactic to battle the area’s worsening homelessness crisis.
Governments, groups and officials from across the county got together behind a coordinated effort with an underlying philosophy: Homeless people have one critical need — housing.
And so that became the priority.
It’s a simple solution, but it took years to get there. That’s partly because of the tradeoffs. With limited dollars, choices sometimes have to be made between sheltering services and investment in housing. Those difficult decisions have led to criticisms of the current approach, but officials are standing firm.
Homelessness as we know it today didn’t really emerge until the 1980s, when federal housing dollars dried up, said Jennifer Bless, homeless services system manager for Boulder County. Study after study has revealed that when housing costs go up, so does homelessness.
“Basically what we’re doing is playing a game of musical chairs,” Bless said. “There are too few affordable housing units for too many people who need them, so somebody is going to get left out of that market. Who gets left out is going to be someone who has more challenges” like mental illness or addiction. That’s why those issues often get blamed for homelessness, she said.
But “it really is at the core an affordable housing crisis issue. If there was a chair available for them, they wouldn’t get left out.”
Boulder County’s focus is now on getting those without housing into housing. In the first full year of coordinated entry — so-called because clients are funneled through one screening system and then connected with services — 188 people were placed in permanent supportive housing, 7.7% of those who accessed services. The county hopes to place a large percentage of the estimated 200 long-term local unhoused residents with an extra $1 million in local funds, plus some matching state and federal grants.
Not only does the approach address the issue at the heart of homelessness, but the housing-first focus saves money.
It costs about $43,000 a year to let someone remain unhoused, Bless said. “They’re often using emergency medical response, interacting with police and the justice system, in addition to sheltering services.” Permanently supportive housing, meanwhile, which includes the cost of subsidizing rent plus connections to services, costs $20,000 a year for each person.
At the end of the day, focusing on housing is a cheaper, more effective way to help our neighbors who have fallen on hard times. More than half of those who sought services in the first year of coordinated entry have lived in Boulder County for more than two years. “We’re providing community members with that foundation of a place to call home,” Bless said.
