Doing More with Less

City, county, All Roads collaborate to overcome homelessness services funding drought

By BRAD WEISMANN  »  Photos by Bonnie Chaim

Despite its picture-perfect reputation, Boulder is no stranger to the problems of people experiencing homelessness. Last winter, All Roads (formerly known as the Boulder Shelter for the Homeless) had to turn away some people on cold, snowy nights simply because of a lack of capacity. Now, with funding withering, the city, county, and associated agencies and organizations must band together to provide all the help they can.

It may not be enough. There is concern about funding cuts. Says Boulder City Council member Lauren Folkerts, “I am very concerned about what this winter will look like. We continue to see increasing rates of people finding themselves in need of social services, and with American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds running out, we are struggling to maintain the services we have. There were numerous people turned away because of capacity this summer, a time of year when the shelter tends to serve fewer people. If these trends hold, we are likely to see a record-setting number of people turned away this winter.”

So, what is to be done? The city, the county and associated agencies crafted cooperative action plans to maximize the resources available to solve the problem. 

Kurt Firnhaber, Boulder Director of Housing and Human Services, explains. “We haven’t had the local resources to really increase our capacity during the wintertime,” he says. “That funding, for the most part, is coming to an end. Our approach has been to maintain the services that we have. One of the things that I will say is more impactful is that we opened our day services center at All Roads. In the past, they were only open during the day when we had extreme weather conditions. Now there are significantly more opportunities not only for people to stay inside during the day but to be in a place where they can get services and do activities, whereas before they had to try to survive.”

All Roads is the nexus of activity for those experiencing homelessness. Says Andy Schultheiss, All Road’s Chief Development & Communications Director, “Every fall is a different discussion with the city and county, as different amounts of resources are available. Last year, All Roads reserved some hotel rooms for a group of our regular clients (at the cost of the city) for the winter, and thereby increased capacity at the shelter building. We also opened a new permanent housing project, Bluebird, in Boulder in January, which took another 40 people off the streets or out of the shelter. And finally, in very cold or snowy circumstances, the city will open its recreation centers for warming. Still, we were turning people away some nights, which is the hardest thing for any of our staff to do. We give them a warm meal, extra blankets and a bus ticket, but it’s a challenging situation.

“This year, we are still in the midst of negotiating with the city, and we don’t know yet what arrangements will be. This past summer, we moved our everyday capacity from 160 to 180 and opened a day center. But the portion of our sheltering budget covered by the county may be cut, and that may cause us to go back down to 160. We don’t always have the capacity to take in the full population living on our streets and in our parks.”

The entities involved take a “Housing First” approach to the homelessness problem, which prioritizes the creation and use of low-income housing to get people off the streets and into habitable shelter. The city already faces a severe housing shortage, which makes planning and executing affordable housing ever more of a challenge.

Heidi Grove, Director of the Boulder County Division of Homeless Systems and Coordinated Response, says, “We’re in a housing crisis; it’s not just a Boulder County problem. There is a direct correlation between the high cost of living and homelessness. 

Persistence is a key in getting people the help they need. “What we’ve been seeing across the region,” Grove says, “[is that] one individual family or individual had eight touch points with services before getting help. A 2020 study from the U.S. Government Accountability Office showed a direct correlation: for every $90 increase in rent, [there is a corresponding 10 percent increase in homelessness.]”

Says Firnhaber, “We’re in the process now of training city and county staff as well as those in public health for when we basically flip a switch and everyone knowns what to do. We are now better prepared and better structured to put that in place. Every year we try to do things a little better. We’ve decreased by 20 percent the number of people sleeping outside. Homelessness here decreased 10 percent when other urban areas nearby went up 10 percent. There’s still times when we don’t have shelter for individuals. You still go into the wintertime with heaviness knowing that.”