This week, staff members from The Community Foundation joined board members and friends of the foundation for a tour of the Boulder Shelter for the Homeless in North Boulder.
A highlight of the tour: Our visit concluded with a stop at the newly opened “housing first” apartment building on Lee Hill. The building has 31 individual apartments for formerly chronically homeless individuals. They pay a portion of their earnings for rent. Case managers are on hand to help them stay housed and achieve self-sufficiency with dignity.
Estimating the number of homeless people in any community is very difficult; a point-in-time survey in January sends volunteers out to “count” the homeless people they find. In 2014, Boulder County had 850 people in its count — 125 of them were chronically homeless. Chronic homelessness is defined as a person or family that is homeless continuously for one year or more, or who have had four episodes of homelessness in the last three years. This year’s point-in-time survey results are expected in May.
About 1,000 men and women seek help from the Boulder Shelter for the Homeless every year. The facility is a large one, with rows and rows of bunk beds in a men’s dorm and a separate women’s dorm as well as facilities for health and dental care and a large kitchen that serves two daily meals. In addition to the winter emergency nighttime sheltering, there are year-round programs to help “transition” the homeless from the streets to their own homes. People can be in transition for up to 9 months, and have case managers and a bed to sleep in every night.
The layout of the shelter is impressive. Executive Director Greg Harms pointed out that because the shelter was able to built the facility from scratch — rather than its previous incarnations in abandoned book stores and motels — it is a very efficient, custom-made shelter. But despite all of the modernization, the shelter still has to send people away almost every night in the winter months, Harms said..
Some are turned away for cause: The safety for all means that people who are dangerously impaired or otherwise acting inappropriately can’t be allowed in. But some are turned away simply because there isn’t enough space to accommodate all. That truly demonstrates the seriousness of the needs here in Boulder County.
If you’d like to learn more about the shelter, donate money or goods or see the shelter’s wish list, go to http://www.bouldershelter.org.
