A Tale of Two Cities
Thursday, August 5, 2010 at 04:39PM ;)
By Tom deMers
“These campers are using municipal property illegally and our police have every right to shut them down.”
—Anchorage, Alaska Mayor Dan Sullivan
Summertime, but the livin’ ain’t easy for homeless people. The only folks who absolutely need to camp are pretty well forbidden to do that in areas they can access. Without saying it, cities are outlawing sleep, hoping that nocturnal harassment will drive homeless campers away, wherever “away” is. It’s classic NIMBYism practiced by homeowners and city officials alike. It seems camping is a luxury for people who already have a place to sleep.
In these situations the ACLU is the best friend homeless people have.
In 2006, it successfully overturned a Los Angeles law that prohibited “sleeping, sitting or lying” on public byways. The law was ruled “cruel and unusual punishment” since the city had so few shelter beds available for homeless sleeping. The ACLU won a similar case against the city of Portland, Oregon, in 2009, when the city’s “sit/lie” law was invalidated. In June of this year, a case in Boulder, Colo., drew the organization’s attention, and following the conviction of David Madison—ticketed before dawn for using a sleeping bag when the temperature was 11 degrees—the ACLU filed an appeal. Madison and a friend had been turned away at the shelter the night before. Sleeping was not Madison’s crime; you can’t criminalize a basic human need. His offense was using “shelter,” a sleeping bag. The prosecutor argued that with a straight face and won.
The situation in Boulder contrasts with Colorado Springs, where a similar law was enforced much differently and has produced positive results.
Seventy-five miles south of Boulder, and at half a million people—roughly five times as large—Colorado Springs has a similar homeless population of 500 to 600. Its anti-camping law was akin to Boulder’s and had a similar effect; the homeless hid their camps and slept in seclusion. But when the city council suspended the ordinance in May 2009, tent camps bloomed along Fountain Creek, a stream that parallels I-25 through the verdant heart of the city. The council had been advised that the law might be unconstitutional if the city did not have sufficient indoor beds for campers. Unable to enforce the law, Springs’ police chief Rich Myers got creative. He handpicked three officers, called them the Homeless Outreach Team (HOT) and sent them out. The officers talked to campers, asked them what they needed, and supplied information about services, an altogether different approach.
By January 2010, the city council was at work on a new no camping law, one that addressed the constitutional issue of insufficient beds. So Bob Holmes started looking for those beds. Holmes is director of Homeward Pikes Peak (HPP), a non-profit that coordinates services for the homeless. Holmes knew the city’s shelters could not handle the people sleeping outside. He located several motels with empty rooms and made some deals. Then the El Pomar Foundation, a local non-profit, came to him with $100,000 in new funding, a grant augmented by $50,000 from the city. He used the money to rent motel space and booked them in three to a room.
The rooms came with strings attached. People given shelter had to actively look for work, one to five job apps per day. If not working, they had to perform eight hours of community service each week. Holmes had found two volunteers, Teresa and Karl McLaughlin, who combed the internet looking for jobs and calling employers. “Would you hire a good homeless worker looking to get off the street?” A June report in the Colorado Springs Gazette said the couple had found jobs for 100 people in 100 days. Holmes celebrated their achievement and was quoted in the article, “If the 100 just made minimum wage, they would make $1.6 million a year. If 30 percent of this money were spent on sales taxable items, the sales tax revenue returned to the city would be about $36,000 a year. So in less than a year and a half, the city will have recouped its ‘investment’ in this ‘human capital.’ The rest is profit for the city.”
As the combination of a motel room, a job and social service support took people off the street, Holmes watched his resources dwindle. His goal was $250,000 to serve 360 people until October. He calculated that was about $700 per person, “one of the best investments any funder could make.”
By early May, 93 campers were in motel rooms and 86 had jobs, primarily in landscaping and construction; 134 others had entered the program only to be booted out for infractions like fighting or drugs. On May 12, El Pomar donated another $50,000.
In a telephone interview, Holmes detailed the program’s results as of July 1: 135 people returned to homes elsewhere (HOT team officers located family or other contacts in home states and said they provided bus tickets for people to reconnect with support networks in their home communities); 22 to drug and alcohol treatment; 56 receiving benefits and moved away; 83 moved to affordable housing; 75 in motel residence; a total of 371 off the streets. Of those, 115 were currently working.
Today, you’ll see many fewer tents along Fountain Creek. Holmes suspects they are people with hard-core drug, alcohol and/or mental health issues, a group requiring more intense assistance. Holmes envisions a second phase starting this fall to work with them, and that will take a second case manager. The day before we spoke, a coalition of churches donated $60,000, making the program total $260,000. Phase two looks possible.
Asked about the success of HPP’s program, Holmes cited three factors: his volunteers Karl and Teresa, Chief of police, Rich Myers, and El Pomar. Clearly he should add himself to that list. His comprehensive, face to face approach has made all the difference. As of this writing, Colorado Springs has issued no camping tickets under its new law, while Boulder police write them daily.
Gazette columnist Barry Noreen has followed the Springs’ homeless issue for three years. He’s walked the creek and talked to people. In a column written in June, after the ACLU decided to challenge Boulder in court, he wrote, “You can’t just wave a wand or pass a new law to make homelessness vanish. Boulder, where many residents consider themselves more enlightened, humane and forward thinking than their Colorado Springs counterparts is about to learn that lesson the hard way.”
And pony up the court costs. •
ACLU, Anchorage, Colorado Springs, Sleep, Tom deMers, camping, homeless in Opinion
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Having spent several years as a homeless child in Colorado Springs and moving aroud from friend to freind and from uncle, cusins and aunts I recall the hurt I felt at times. Some of the more difficult times were attending a new school at least twice a year until High School for two years until graduation which was less than stellar. However I have so many fond memories of those years even after my Dad died when I was 8 and my life became one of self-suffiency. I recall my first jobs which were cleaning restrooms in local gas stations and then moving to Espanola, New Mexico and selling the the local Rio Grande Sun and the New Mexican once a week. Upon returning to Colorado I began a shoe shine business in some African-American social clubs and for soldiers in Ft. Carson. During my growing up, we never felt like we were homeless. I am not even sure I ever heard the word. Nonetheless I very much appreciate hearing of the actions of the El Pomar foundation and the Colorado Springs city council to work positbely to address this growing crisis in American. Your article is informative and uplifiting and certainly something I could not have learned from the corporate media. Thank you for drilling down to discover and report the truth. Excellent artlclea along with many others in the newspaper. Thank you for allowing me to comment.
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