It’s 11:20 a.m., and The Delores Project’s phone is ringing incessantly.
The homeless shelter for women sets aside 10 of its 50 beds for call-ins. Reservations are accepted starting at 11:30 each morning. Most days lately, all 10 are filled by 11:34.
The shelter opened eight years ago after several murders of homeless men underscored the need for beds.
The facility was named in honor of Delores Big Boy, a Lakota woman who was left developmentally delayed from a high fever she suffered as a child. “Delo,” as her family called her, gravitated south to the big city, always returning within a week after they would come from the Pine Ridge Reservation to take her home.
She slipped through the cracks in 1999 when she died in Denver at age 43 on a park bench.
The shelter named in her honor is one of two in the city exclusively serving unaccompanied women — those like Delores who are on the streets alone and vulnerable.
The agency is seeking funding from the Post-News Season to Share campaign.
The core philosophy can be summed up in one word: hospitality.
That means handmade quilts on each bed, flowers on the dining tables and closets where the clients may hang their clothes properly.
It means being accepted where they are, addictions and all, and not greeted at the door with long lists of goals that have to be accomplished or rules that have to be met.
And, most important to women who spend their days anonymously, it means being welcomed by a staff who take time to learn their names and stories. “We’re not about stacking people up like cordwood,” says executive director Terrell Curtis.
The shelter, near West Colfax Avenue and Federal Boulevard, operates from 4 p.m. to 8 a.m. Aside from a bed, heat and a roof over their heads, clients are offered dinners, breakfasts, showers and a library from which they can take — and keep — any books that strike their fancy.
A typical client is in her late 30s or early 40s. About a quarter have chronic mental illnesses. None among those who have jobs earn anything close to the $13.31 an hour that it’s estimated they would need to be earning to afford a one-bedroom apartment in Denver. An average stay is 41 days.
“They can stay for as long as they need to. Our goal is to make sure they don’t need to,” Curtis says.
The shelter has no shortage of manpower. Volunteers have made dinners every night for eight years and counting.
Still, these are tough times for any nonprofit to raise money.
“I’m really glad I’m running a human services organization and not the art museum or symphony. Because people get it. They understand the vitality of what we do — that people are gonna die if we don’t get them inside,” Curtis says.
She knows her shelter can’t save every one of its clients. But in honor of Delores Big Boy, it strives to assure each one that someone knows who they are and cares about what becomes of them.
As Curtis tells it: “They can’t just live with no one knowing who they are and no one having been changed by them. I mean isn’t that what we all want? It’s the very least we can do.”
The Delores Project
In operation since: January 2000
Number served last year: 532
Staff: 19
Yearly budget: $606,000
Percentage of funds directly to clients/ services: 87 percent
