The largest homeless shelter in the City of Boulder has changed its name from Boulder Shelter for the Homeless to All Roads, reflecting a strategic shift toward housing solutions over emergency sheltering.
The nonprofit now provides support services to more than 180 people in homes, surpassing the 160 people it typically accommodates each night at its North Boulder shelter. These services include assistance with appointments and case management for substance use and mental health issues.
“We now serve more people outside the shelter each night than in,” Andy Schultheiss, the organization’s chief development and communications officer, told Boulder Reporting Lab in an email.
The shelter was established in 1982 after a homeless Vietnam veteran died of cold exposure in Central Park. It then relocated to a former motel in North Boulder before moving to its current location in 2003, doubling its bed capacity to about 160.
Despite rising homelessness in Boulder County, the number of beds at the shelter has remained unchanged since then. During winter months, the shelter often reaches capacity, resulting in people being turned away. For the past two years, the City of Boulder and Boulder County have opened temporary emergency shelters during extreme cold weather.
In 2022, the organization expanded its focus on housing by purchasing apartments to rent to people with criminal records who had difficulty finding a landlord willing to rent to them. It now owns 24 apartments. Additionally, it has contracted with the City of Boulder to establish a day services center that offers housing support services to people who might otherwise avoid the shelter for sleeping.
Boulder’s 2024 budget allocates $4.3 million to the shelter, according to a city official. Much of the rest of the organization’s budget comes from Boulder County and private donations.
Schultheiss said that the former name, Boulder Shelter for the Homeless, often confused donors. “We’ve been swimming uphill against our name for years,” he said. “Our mission is housing focused.”
Let’s be blunt: This is total surrender to chronic homelessness fueled by mental illness and substance abuse. Those clients won’t succeed — by any reasonable standard — in any kind of housing.
Some will and are.
Excuse me, recycling into homeless “programs” and then back to the streets over and over is NOT a reasonable standard for success!
I am so glad Boulder County is doing something to try to help the homeless crisis. Turning a “blind eye” to it is morally and ethically wrong. I hope we will continue to find ways to help the homeless.
This campaign is like that of “Reimagining Policing”.
I have been unable to find any contractors to install the fire vents in my home’s soffits.
They don’t even know what I’m talking about most of the time. I’d like to use the $500 grant for this purpose. Thanks.
Barbara don’t you mean screens over your vents?
What percentage Ashley?
Your article fails to mention the former Emergency Shelter that was located on 30th Street near Valmont Ave. When I was homeless in 2019-2020 I spent the first month and a half there. It sheltered approximately 75-100 people when the temperature was deemed to be to cold to safely sleep outside.
The purchase of 24 homes is certainly a nice step, but if I remember correctly a proposal to build an additional homeless shelter which also offered additional services was voted down. Did the camping ban go into effect? If so, where can homeless people who cannot sleep at the homeless shelter or choose to sleep outside stay without breaking the law?
The camping ban has been in effect since the 1980s, except for a brief time around 2015 or so. This is the problem with all the new services at the Shelter and the focus on housing, there’s nowhere else to go. People have been turned away by the dozens from the shelter each month in the winter months with a blanket and a good luck. There is nowhere else to go. They are forced to camp illegally. I can’t see how these numbers will do anything but increase with the addition of the day shelter services attracting more people in the winter
Also, a lot of what the Shelter is doing is through the newish City of Boulder’s Building Home program that provides case management to all those folks in permanent supportive housing. This is an ever increasing number of people since it’s been a focus for Boulder housing policy the last couple of years. This is a big contract for the shelter and why they are providing services to more people outside the shelter than in it.
Roxanne- It will add to the quantity of demand for housing, those staying year round, and drive up the cost of housing further. The developers already complain, so they will just move their workload to outlying cheaper communities, until they are squeezed everywhere and the city lowers their subsidies, seeing there is no return on giving them out. The point of diminishing returns comes when the homeless overtake the community financially. I state this at the risk of stating the obvious.
Lynn – Not sure what you are saying. Building more actual affordable housing is good for the community and will not jack up housing prices. Not sure the Shelter should be in that business, but nonprofit developers and housing authorities and their partners can usually figure out how to fund it through grants, tax credits, bonds etc. to make building it feasible. . If we build enough of it, prices will begin to stabilize because those who most need housing will have some choices. Of the 50% or so of folks in the city who rent, most need affordable rental housing so they can continue to stay here and work here. The unhoused are not taking up a majority of the affordable housing. For example at Hilltop, there will be 15 subsidized units set aside for those at the shelter. At Rally about ten. Project based vouchers, like tenant based vouchers are funded through HUD. So it’s not like the unhoused are going to take over the city as you state. They are going to be slotted in here and there. And the county now has that new affordable housing fund that will kick in next year. The city should not have be on the hook for extra.
The problem is the LIHTC funds from the feds that push growth. For every affordable there are many more unaffordables that drive up property taxes and with it the overall cost of housing, more evictions and homeless. The missing middle is being accommodated with tuna can sized 300 sf. micro-efficiencies for $1700-$2600 AMI, without a parking space, and that was 3 yrs. ago, higher AMI now. There’s a hearing on it Thur. at CC. 2206 Pearl.