The day the mayors arrived for a “homeless summit,” the signs went up.
As per the Denver Revised Municipal Code, this winter there’ll be no more sleeping on the grates of the City and County Building. It would be trespassing.
For most, that’s good news. But it’s bad news for Denver’s unmarried homeless couples, who otherwise would be able to sleep together on the grates. For unmarried couples, Aurora has Comitis Crisis Center; Lakewood has the Jeffco Action Center.
But there’s no such place in Denver.
That’s one of the steel cobwebs hanging over Denver’s Road Home, the 10-year plan to end homelessness. Despite incontrovertible successes like Housing First and the Outreach Collaborative, there are still some unresolved concerns after the first two years of the Ten-Year Plan.
Because I’ve been involved with homeless issues in Denver since the beginning of the Metro Denver Homeless Initiative in 1994, I’ve had a lengthy peek at the evolution of Denver’s Road Home and other positive homeless programs.
Compared with the old Blake Street shelter, where I first stayed after becoming homeless, the new Crossroads shelter was a big improvement. It opened in November 1994. The walls and floor were freshly painted, and you could rent a bunk and a locker for $14 per week.
Those went fast.
Otherwise, most people slept on a mat on the cement floor for free. On wet and wintry nights, it was deplorable: mud everywhere, the floor mats three inches apart, with tension and tempers like flint stones waiting for the strike. There were lots of Vietnam vets suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome.
That hasn’t changed much, except now it’s Gulf War vets and those who got battered by Iraq.
Before there was a Ten-Year Plan to End Homelessness, there was the “Blueprint for Addressing Homelessness in Denver.” It was drawn up by the Denver Homeless Planning Group, led so ably by Nan Morehead, and its People Living in Public Places (PLIPP) committee. After a series of earnest meetings at St. Francis Center — which brought together the homeless, business leaders, city personnel and other homeless agency leaders — the Blueprint was delivered in September 2003.
Then came the perfect storm of political will for Denver’s homeless. In November 2003, John Hickenlooper and 10 of 11 new city council members were elected.
About that time, Denver was asked to be one of 100 communities nationwide to initiate a Ten-Year Plan to End Homelessness. Hickenlooper took up the challenge, essentially by implementing the Blueprint. He named Roxane White, head of Denver’s Department of Human Services, to chair a blue-ribbon commission to end homelessness.
Establishing that eight-part, 10-year plan was done efficiently over several years, culminating in a series of proposed actions along a dynamic timeline.
It has been two years since the Ten- Year Plan began its implementation. There have been well-publicized successes. And what’s ahead this winter is a plan where overnight and daytime shelters will be able to extend their hours, so the homeless won’t have to spend much time in the cold.
But an immediate danger, still, is emergency cold-weather housing for the homeless. Instead of a regular severe-weather shelter that had worked so well in previous winters, this year, Denver’s Road Home struck a deal with the City Council. Instead of bothering a neighborhood for permission to have a cold-weather emergency shelter, the city would provide $1 million for rental assistance. It turned out to be a tricky trade-off.
With winter’s stiff talons looming, it’s an issue that needs some serious tending to. Regarding that $1 million, Denver’s Road Home is (understandably) behind schedule. But it means, in cold weather, a build-up of homeless in the shelters.
More pressure, more tension. And more unmitigated indignities for those on the floor.
“Dignity” is now a popular buzzword for Denver’s Road Home. There’s a small marketing campaign urging those who want to feed the homeless to do so indoors — not in the parks. A recent poster urges those who want to feed the homeless to “move their efforts indoors.” Why?
The poster says: “This will enable people to be fed with dignity .”
Dignity is good. It should be a lodestone for further action.
So let’s start there. Denver’s Road Home should modify its Ten-Year Plan to increase the dignity of the homeless by eliminating — somehow — the “on the floor” conditions that only reinforce the indignities those homeless citizens already endure.
Stephen Terence Gould is a member of the Denver Commission to End Homelessness, and received the 2007 Michael Gilbert Outstanding Achievement Award from the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless. He was a member of the 2005 Colorado Voices panel.
