The Boulder Shelter for the Homeless, the city’s largest shelter in North Boulder, reached full capacity during Thursday night’s snowstorm. As a result, four people were turned away due to lack of capacity, a shelter official told Boulder Reporting Lab.
The shelter expanded its capacity to sleep 180 people during last week’s storm, which dumped about 18 inches of snow on parts of the City of Boulder, according to the National Weather Service. During such weather events, the shelter’s protocol is to increase its capacity to 180 from 160 people and remain open during the day to people who slept there the prior night. The shelter is typically closed from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., though a new day services center is expected to open this year.
In January, when an Arctic cold front brought dangerously cold temperatures to Boulder, the city partnered with Boulder County to open the East Boulder Community Center as a temporary emergency shelter. Dozens of people spent the night there. The city did not open an emergency shelter during last week’s storm.
The shelter has regularly turned people away due to limited capacity in recent years and reached full capacity on Wednesday night last week. People who are turned away typically receive a bus ticket, blanket and food.
Thursday night was the first night the shelter turned people away due to capacity on a “critical weather night” this season, according to Andy Schultheiss, a spokesperson for the shelter. Critical weather includes forecasts showing winds above 70 miles per hour, a daily high of 20 degrees Fahrenheit or below, a nightly low of 10 degrees Fahrenheit or below, or six inches or more of snow.
These turnaways highlight one of the tradeoffs the City of Boulder has made as it focuses primarily on housing people experiencing homelessness rather than expanding emergency shelter capacity. Last year, councilmembers considered creating a site where homeless people could legally sleep in tents or sturdier structures on city-owned land. But talks of such a project have fizzled somewhat amid uncertainty over how to pay for it. Additionally, the city is grappling with financial challenges, including paying for its eviction prevention program and urgent calls for investments in drug addiction treatment in light of the recent rise in fentanyl overdoses among homeless people.
The Boulder Shelter for the Homeless helped get nearly 100 people into subsidized housing in 2023, according to shelter staff. Progress, however, is continuously stymied by the rise in homelessness across the region.
This year, the Boulder Shelter for the Homeless is planning to begin operating 24 hours per day and add day services primarily aimed at helping more people get housing.
Fact is that dozens more homeless people simply refuse to use the shelter, rejecting it as unsuitable for many different reasons. I know this to be true because I was one of them for about a decade; I preferred to brave the elements with a ton of camping gear.
Max – what changed for you?
I’m now living in a long-term care facility here in Boulder, coping with several serious health issues.
It’s still better than BSH!
And how many such ammenities as Max is experiencing are there for how many lined up for the need?
Good luck with the health issues. What I was asking was, any particular program that helped get you off the street? BSH is expanding into day services, i would like to see them be services people would actually use.
Here’s what I believe would be of the greatest benefit to the most homeless people (at a fraction of what Boulder’s homeless shelter/services currently spends):
https://www.squareonevillages.org/opportunity
Having said that, I hasten to add that it would be a terrible mistake to entrust this to the present leadership at the nonprofit Boulder Shelter or any city/county agency; we need a fresh start!
Yes!! I have been actively promoting SquareOne villages approach to city council for the past couple of years. They recently completed Peace Village which is something we could do here on a small plot of city owned land. Check out this Open House Program for Peace Village – especially the segment by founder Andrew Heben where he explains the model. https://www.squareonevillages.org/single-post/peace-village-virtual-open-house
Four people turned away, with what a bus ticket and a blanket? This is beyond shameful. Beyond unacceptable. We need to come to grips as a city with why we can’t manage this homeless crisis better than we do. It’s not going away and people are without options. Time to establish a dedicated tax if all else fails. We need projects and programs that actually work for all.
Max, you could build a high-rise Opportunity Village in Boulder, but that has confinement issues that are degrading to the neighborhood that they are positioned in and would not have the well received status from the community it has in Eugene. Boulder’s housing junket to Eugene was more wasted taxpayer dollars, an exercise in futility.
A camping site with management is as expensive as hoteling, as Michael Johnson in Denver is discovering as the undocumented’s flood in. The conversion of hotels may work for him, but the opportunity we had in Boulder at the Millennium is another elite student housing give-away to CU.
The solution is simple. Let the developer pay.
Looking at Peace Village, Roxanne, the only city land I know of at Alpine Balsam already has lost a great deal of it’s affordable housing to market rate units, paying off the loan for 10 years. The city only owns it because it charged the residents to buy it, so the residents have less to pay towards STR. Maybe Kimball’s brother could fund it, but I don’t see the power brokers pitching in. Boulder’s not that desirable. Yet. Once CU South’s built maybe Elon will put up his mom in the 311 Mapleton 4500 sf. penthouse for $40 K /mo. and $5M “membership fee” that you get back 85% of when you die. And that’s for one person.
The AMI is too high here and it is not housing indexed. At 2206 Pearl it is $1700-$2600 for the missing middle at 80-100% AMI. We have nothing but a sliver of token housing for homeless for free, as the land’s too expensive for the 0-60% AMI.
Lynn, there are several parcels of vacant city-owned land that were considered for the sanctioned encampment a few months ago so they do exist. Or some wealthy person could donate a couple of acres (LOL!). Peace Village could be done on as little as one acre. If the land is free the rest is doable — if we could attract a nonprofit as skilled as SquareOne to implement it. That’s the main problem in Boulder, we have an incredibly weak nonprofit infrastructure and the few good ones we do have in the homeless arena are entrenched in their own silos with no incentive to collaborate for the greater good. Peace Village is so well constructed and such a smart use of space that they actually have enough extra space to bring in Opportunity Village to the site so they can have both transitional and the permanent affordable housing co-op units in one place. That will be an awesome community, and a way to help the unhoused who have almost zero chance of getting housing in the existing system create a good life.
Correction — Opportunity Village has moved to the site of upcoming Rosa Village!
Roxanne, Andrew Heber says:
“The problem is that because cooperatively-owned housing is unfamiliar, its not currently compatible with a lot of the public subsidies and incentives that support affordable housing efforts. (Like LIHTC funding).
We are hopeful that this project will make progress in that regard. Peace Village Co-op received $5.3m in funding from the state legislature and Oregon Housing & Community Services to build this housing as a “Shared-Equity Homeownership Pilot Program.” And we believe that this pilot will demonstrate the value of this model and the need for more resources invested in housing that is cooperatively owned by the people that live in it”.
He’s right about paragraph 1, that is if localities can offset the bribe of LIHTC matching funds from the Feds., however, LIHTC is a deliberate strategic plan to undermine the entire housing economy at the behest of increasing population, which by default increases the wealth divide and increases homelessness.
Actually if the mortgage industry reformed to promote multiple investors in all private property, there might be a chance.
Agreed. LIHTC is not great for the housing market, but not necessarily for the reasons you mention. Population has increased whether there’s housing for it or not. Shelterforce has recently done a whole series on LIHTC. I would think states would welcome innovative housing strategies at this point. I bet the state would help fund something like this. Probably could even use Prop 123.