The City of Boulder’s Planning and Development Services Department has approved a new management plan for Boulder’s largest shelter, the Boulder Shelter for the Homeless, allowing it to operate 24 hours a day and increase its capacity from 160 to 180 people. Currently, the shelter is closed from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Residents have said the current schedule makes it harder to get jobs with irregular hours, among other challenges.
A spokesperson for the Boulder Shelter for the Homeless told Boulder Reporting Lab that the shelter does not have a firm date for when it will change its hours of operation. The shelter is focusing on hiring more staff first.
Expanding the shelter’s hours will also allow it to provide day services. These services could help people meet their basic needs by providing them access to a shower, laundry and storage, as well as helping them sign up for public benefits and resolve municipal tickets.
The move aligns with the Boulder City Council’s 2022 policy priority to establish a “day services center” as part of its efforts to address increasing homelessness. For further details on the plan, see our previous reporting:
Boulder’s largest nighttime homeless shelter may soon be open during the day
The City and the Shelter have ignored the past year’s growing crime and harassment issues in and around BSH and the North Boulder neighborhoods. The Day Shelter was approved with virtually no mitigation of neighborhood impacts, and the City’s SAMPS clean-up crew and police presence have been and continue to be ineffectual. Sporadic clean-ups of encampments or moving drug users off public sidewalks and trails solve the problem for 24 hours before it returns.
This is partly because jails are full and enforcement of misdemeanors is not a priority in that regard. And we have a steadily growing population experiencing homelessness migrating to Boulder, far outstripping people who have actually exited to affordable or transitional housing.
Boulder is compassionate. Compassion has consequences. And budgetary limits. And impacts on families all over town. The Day Shelter is an incremental solution already outstripped by the sheer growth in numbers of those experiencing homelessness in Boulder.