Marian House forum addresses homeless camps
Bill Howard
Feb 3, 2010 5:00 PM
COLORADO SPRINGS. On Jan. 18 and 20, a community forum on how to best address homelessness in the Colorado Springs community drew a packed dining hall at Catholic Charities of Colorado Springs’ Marian House Soup Kitchen.

Members of the homeless community joined local business and church

leaders and concerned citizens in the discussion, with Steve Saint of the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission facilitating the event.

Over the past year, tent camps for homeless people have sprouted and spread along Monument and Fountain creeks near I-25 in downtown Colorado Springs, drawing national media attention. Amid a wave of local stories on both agencies and individuals pouring into the camps with aid, churches, businesses and concerned citizens have been trying to find a balance in addressing the needs of both the homeless population and local community.

Catholic Charities of Colorado Springs CEO and President Jason Christensen began the forum on Jan. 18 with one ground rule: "Don’t refer to homeless as ‘those people.’ They’re our people."

More than 150 attendees then listened to presentations from police officers working on the Colorado Springs Police Department’s Homeless Outreach Team (HOT) and from the leader of the community group Keep Colorado Springs Beautiful. Speakers were accompanied by slide shows that gave attendees a glimpse of the rough life of the tent camps. The gathering then broke into small-group discussions to identify a handful of needs to be addressed by the community.

Officer Dan McCormick of the HOT team presented the issue of homelessness in the city as one that is complex but solvable if the community works together. He said that some homeless people suffer from mental health issues such as depression and may self-medicate with alcohol and drugs. Others, he said, may be clean but have different obstacles to getting out of their situation.

"The homeless should not be profiled, as each person is different with different circumstances surrounding their homelessness," he said.

McCormick painted a less-than-romantic picture of the camps, saying that as some of them have grown, they have also been plagued by alcohol, drugs and violent assaults — including fights, thefts and rape. Drug addicts from outside the camps are descending upon them and causing some of the violence. Fires are becoming more commonplace at the camps, with a group of youth from outside the camps recently setting ablaze a pile of unused donations at the largest site near I-25 and Cimarron Street.

With no public bathrooms nearby, human waste and rotting, uneaten food are causing environmental health problems, McCormick said. Among his other points: the camps are encroaching near public walking and biking trails, causing safety concerns among the trails’ users; business owners are worried that the camps will steer patrons elsewhere; and a reminder that being homeless is not a crime and therefore it becomes a police issue when unsafe behavior and crime occurs at the camps.

"We need a concerted and cohesive effort from the community to address homelessness," Officer McCormick concluded. "Let’s address these issues as a community and help those in need while also cleaning up the city."

In her presentation, Keep Colorado Springs Beautiful executive director Deborah Cunningham showed images of massive cleanups being performed at the largest tent camp at I-25 and Cimmaron. Some of the unsanitary situations were caused by members of the camp and others by criminals who have been descending upon the camps and vandalizing them.

"The camp shown in this video is the exception to how most camps are," she qualified, adding that most of the camps were in better condition.

Cunningham implored attendees to continue to give toward the needs of the homeless but to do so through agencies can detect just what the needs are. Over the Christmas holiday, many people went directly to the camps and brought clothes, blankets, stuffed animals and food — so much that some camps had their own giveaways. Boxes and cans of food were donated with no cooking equipment or ingredients to make them, so they sat in boxes and rotted. In one slide, broken crates of moldy bagels sat in a pile.

In addition to sanitary concerns, Cunningham talked about how such a food situation can create an environment that would draw dangerous animals from the forests upon the camp.

Keep Colorado Springs Beautiful has been providing garbage bags to the camps, and stories were told of concerned people stopping by to help pick up the bags and keep the camps clean. Cunningham said the community needs to be united to identify the real needs of the homeless camps.

On Jan. 20, nearly three dozen identified areas of concern from the previous gathering were whittled into six topics: jobs, health-care access, safety, affordable housing, shelter capacity and sanitation. At the end of the evening, each topic had a handful of proposed actions, among them:

— Explore the possibility of a self-governed, organized tent camping location.

— Create housing situations where residents can trade their skills for a lower rent.

— Increase funding for the HOT team.

— Create a centralized skills database of homeless people to make it easier for employers to connect with them.

— Encourage local physicians to donate time each month to providing medical attention to the homeless population to help them get healthy and more able to find work.

— Create a community of business owners who will dedicate themselves to prioritizing the training and hiring of homeless persons.

— Dramatically increase the availability of showers.

— Create a host family program to provide more one-on-one mentorship.

— Increase the number of shelters, which some said would lead to less crime in the streets.

Among the partial remedies also discussed during the forum was a city ordinance banning camping in city parks. Debate and voting is scheduled to take place later this month.

Homeless representatives said the issue of obtaining a legal form of identification — such as a Social Security card — to apply for jobs was often a frustrating experience as many of them no longer had the three forms of ID required to reapply for a Social Security card.

There was also some debate about the notion of individual donations as enabling the campers to stay in their situation. A large amount of focus was given to transitioning the campers into better living arrangements. Meanwhile, one attendee who brought socks and blankets to campers during the below-freezing spells in December and January said she did not consider her actions as enabling but rather ensuring that homeless people can survive day to day to pursue other options.

By the end of the forum, a call was also made by several attendees for greater communication between the homeless communities and service providers. Bob Holmes, executive director of Homeward Pikes Peak, spoke at the Jan. 20 session and said that the community must take care of its own.

"We need to really concentrate on not only delivering a message of hope, but solid programs too so that if anyone falls into a state of homelessness, it’s not a black hole," he said. "Homelessness and poverty should be temporary states."

The forum was co-sponsored by Catholic Charities of Colorado Springs, the Colorado Springs Police Department, Homeward Pikes Peak, Keep Colorado Springs Beautiful, Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission, and Springs Rescue Mission.