By: Ernest Gurulé
There is no denying that Denver, along with most every American city, is dealing with one of the 21st century’s most serious social challenges. Growing homeless populations that seem to expand before our very eyes are in some cities very nearly becoming intractable problems. While Denver is not unique in being unable to solve the problem, it is at least moving in the right direction and finding shelter for many who have found themselves in this situation.
The problem, say city officials, may never be solved and a victory flag for the homeless may never be raised, but doing nothing is not now nor will ever be the solution.
“Homelessness is a very complicated social issue with impact throughout the whole community,” said Angie Nelson, Denver’s Deputy Director of Housing Stability and Homelessness Resolutions. But little by little—and often too slow to please everyone—the city is nonetheless moving in the right direction. Nelson’s department just announced that using a combination of federal funding sources the city has found shelter for nearly 600 individuals in a total of 359 households.
The latest effort is the second 100-day undertaking to take homeless clients off the street and relocated into housing. In making the announcement, Denver Mayor Michael Hancock said this effort was the second, but not last, undertaking—the first just over three months ago—to successfully placing roofs over the heads of both individuals and families.
While homeless is often used as a catch-all phrase for this population, said Nelson, it is an extraordinarily diverse group. It can include everyone from an individual who has lost their job and suddenly become homeless to someone who, for a variety of reasons, including the pandemic, has been cast into a chronically homeless situation. The homeless also includes sub-groups made up of elderly, disabled or those who have been clinically diagnosed as mentally ill. But the challenge remains moving as many individuals off the street as possible.
For homeless who have mental illness issues, said Nelson, “We try to approach it in a number of ways,” including providing street outreach and going to where people are and engaging with them. “We’re working to meet them at the point of need” by people with an expertise in mental health.
Nelson says the city has gotten a number of younger homeless and “families with minor children” into housing.
“In some ways,” she said, “it’s a different pipeline,” and one that requires working more closely with partners.
Mental health experts say that homelessness for young children often creates its own set of problems. According to the National Child Traumatic Stress Network, “homeless children have twice the rate of learning disabilities and three time the rate of emotional and behavioral problems of non-homeless children.” More than half of schoolage homeless children, said NCTSN, experience anxiety, depression or withdrawal.” It is estimated that families with children now compose one third of the nation’s homeless population.
“First and foremost,” said Nelson, “housing is a basic human need…we want to work so that every person is housing connected.” Right now, she said, the city’s most recent shift is the “prioritization around folks with underlying health conditions, older people, for example.” In a perfect world, that would mean “long term housing.”
The city is moving as quickly as it can. But because the city doesn’t have all the resources it might like, including ownership of housing availability, it has connected with partners. The city also said it has “leveraged the voter approved Homelessness Resolution Fund to expand an existing contract with the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless to provide housing unites from their own portfolio and to help identify private landlords willing to participate.”
Despite the city’s efforts to find housing, there is still the challenge of payment; how do newly housed clients pay for their new dwelling? “Most of the resources made available are through housing vouchers and rent subsidies,” said Nelson. The subsidy will stay with that person as “long as they stay in that unit.” If a person placed in housing has a job and earns an income, she said, “thirty percent of those resources goes toward rent.”
As the city works toward addressing the challenge of homelessness, it must also deal with the reality that not everyone is calling and asking for the displaced to come live in their neighborhoods. Nelson is all too familiar with NIMBY—‘Not In My Back Yard.’ “I think it is so critical that we understand it’s going to take a response from the whole community to come together,” she said. “It’s not an issue for one part of town to solve.”
To meet this group as close to half-way as possible, Nelson and her team work to engage and gain the support of the neighborhood, the communities and the business who are aligned with the city. “We’re trying to show that housing works.”
