Thread by @shayshinecastle

As this tweet suggested, we're talking homelessness at tonight's Boulder city council study session. No votes; just discussion.

It's broken into 3 parts:
- Strategy for single adults
- Family homelessness
- Encampment removal, which the city calls Safe and Managed Public Spaces

https://twitter.com/shayshinecastle/status/1646634397771386880

Get ready , bc this shit is BLEAK.

I'll start with something I didn't see in the packet: We are seeing an increase in "the most vulnerable" among the homeless, according to Heidi Grove with HSBC.

She told me that a few months ago after I noticed an increase in people with mobility devices.

Vulnerability can mean a lot of things: age (older adult homelessness increasing for sure) disability, mental illness, etc.

Grove said there was a noticeable increase with more than one measure of vulnerability.

I observed an increase of people using mobility devices at the weekly outreach event I volunteer at, with Feet Forward, which I started doing because I think it's criminal that so much reporting about homelessness doesn't include actual homeless people.

I'm not throwing shade; I've done it. But it seemed unacceptable to keep doing it. And I am much better informed than I used to be before I started volunteering.

I mention that because it's part of my process, just like reading studies and interviewing experts.

OK, getting started. Here's the first staff presentation: documents.bouldercolorado.gov/WebLink/DocVie…

It's gonna be a lot of information coming your way; I'll try to summarize and tighten where I can, but buckle up.

Director of Housing and Human Services Kurt Firnhaber: When I first joined the city 7 years ago, I rarely met with the county. Now we meet every week.

Firnhaber starts with some happy stats, which includes 19 new landlords leasing to previously unhoused folks, resulting in 53 new leases.

That's almost entirely due to the hiring of a person to recruit landlords.

Megan Newton, the city's homeless policy advisor (she was previously with muni court; I'd see her often at Feet Forward working with clients): The inflow of people entering homeless always outpaces our ability to house people.

Let's talk some numbers:
Homelessness has been increasing nationally since 2016; faster and more in Colorado

Denver metro: 12.8% increase (vs. 0.3% nationally) from 2020 to 2022
- Including 33% increase in unsheltered homelessness (vs 3.4% nationally)

As we know, homelessness increases more and more quickly where housing costs increase.

Staff in notes to council: “Core to the HSBC approach is the recognition that homelessness is fundamentally an affordable housing issue”

HSBC = Homeless Solutions Boulder County, which is Boulder County's Continuum of Care

Continuum of Care = the system/approach to homelessness; nonprofits and gov't agencies providing services

Back to the numbers:
Coordinated entry screenings (which one of the ways to measure homelessness): 11% increase from 2021 to 2022, 4% decrease from 2020

When you look at the Point in Time (PIT) count, which is a one-day count of unhoused folks in January, BoCo saw:
- 34% reduction in sheltered homelessness from last year
- 31% decrease in unsheltered homelessness

Big BUT on that one from staff...

That reduction is likely due to a decrease in family homelessness, or it could be counting error, staff noted. (PIT are notoriously volatile)

HSBC will start a second PIT count in July

Grove just said HSBC could hit some Built for Zero target by the end of the year. I know what I *think* I heard, but I'm not sure, so I'm not gonna tweet it.

You can read about B4Z here: boulderbeat.news/2022/09/03/3-p…

That July count will primarily focus on unsheltered homelessness, Newton says, because that always increases in the summer.

A new federal plan for homelessness calls for a 25% reduction by 2025; there aren't similar local goals, but HSBC is gonna evaluate its system to see "where additional focus can be given"

Per staff, here are their identified "challenges" to being more successful:
- Not enough affordable housing stock
- Lack of treatment for drugs / mental health
- Inflow (more ppl becoming homeless)
- Increased need of support due to wage/housing cost imbalances

HSBC had a 30% success rate (inflow vs outflow) in 2022, which is pretty standard for the Denver metro, Newton says

CE screenings: 1,108
Exits from homelessness: 339

The city/county is looking to add a respite care facility for folks with health issues. They often get discharged from the hospital and back to the streets. And with no day shelter, it's hard to manage chronic health conditions.

The city is also, finally, looking at a day center, after council made it a priority.

Apparently Boulder Shelter for the Homeless is interested in that. The city did a Request for Proposals for that, but it doesn't sound like BSH did that process.

"We did not receive any applications or replies that met the requirements," Firnhaber says.

Per staff notes: HHS "has been informed by BSH
that BSH is interested in moving forward with the next steps in the process of operating a day service center”

Firnhaber announces the location: 1844 Folsom Street, which will be a day center with (eventually) 50 units of affordable housing above it

We're moving on quickly, but I think it's notable that BSH did NOT go through the city process, but gets to do the day shelter anyway. Not surprising to me, for a number of reasons, which I hope to expand on at some point.

Firnhaber says BSH was going through a "leadership change" (true) and that's why they didn't respond to the RFP. But this follows a pattern I've noticed where the city eschews any other providers in favor of BSH. boulderbeat.news/2023/01/20/she….

Why that might be is hard to say. My speculation is that BSH is aligned with the city/county staff when it comes to their belief about/approach to homelessness... an approach that has been heavily criticized, in this community and beyond.

Also, to be fair and take a full look at this, it's incredibly likely that no other service provider is interested in working with the city. Bridge House, in particular, had a negative experience with the Path to Home closure.

This is all very insider baseball, and forgive me if you don't care. But I promise it matters, bc the Shelter — while they do great work — also has a problematic history and perception among many unhoused folks.

That matters, bc the Shelter is basically it. If you don't want to go there, your options (other than camping illegally) are slim to none. And many folks have had bad experiences there.

Anyway, more on this in upcoming sections of Homelessness 101.

City just sent out a news release about the day center. Existing building will be used for 12-14 months, then the center temporarily relocated while it is redeveloped into day center + 50 units of supportive housing.

Wallach: The federal plan to end homelessness. Are they actually providing us with any resources?

Grove: The agencies involved are going to align their grant funding with it. The Biden admin has committed to investing, and we've seen that with emergency housing vouchers.

Wallach: What % of high utilizers have been successfully housed and treated?
Newton: Our high utilizer team has only been meeting since January. "Without additional resources, trying to fit them into the system as it stands has been challenging."

3 have been housed, Newton says; 2 were already in line. 2 or 3 have been connected with treatment options.

"Part of the work is to create programs specifically for these individuals who don't quite fit in our system."

Wallach: "The day shelter, are there going to be any metrics by which we judge its success or failure?"

Firnhaber: "Metrics will be related to the programs that are run through and at that facility."

Wallach: We had an update on homelessness on July 14, 2020. What has changed since then? What have we learned, what are we doing better, what's worse?

Firnhaber: We've continued to house people, we've continued to bring on additional units for that population.

"One of the improvements I've seen, particularly with our added capacity, is we're able to have more coordination with the organizations that are doing the work," Firnhaber says.

Firnhaber: "The organizations that do this work — Feet Forward, Bridge House the Shelter, Focus Reentry — they need funding that is outside what the city can provide. This work has become more expensive."

"They really need financial support of the citizens as well," he says.

Question from Brockett on a TBD team on behavioral health. BoCo is gonna do a study to ID gaps in services, and may possibly float a Behavioral Health Tax to fund future programs and such.

It's called the Behavioral Health Roadmap. Per staff: "The behavioral health system continues to be difficult to navigate, has significant barriers to access, and lacks a comprehensive continuum of supports and services."

Brockett: We do have so many initiatives going on, some positive developments, "but with a walk or bike ride through town, we know the options or resources available are not meeting the need of unsheltered residents right now."

"What's out there now, or that we're adding in the next 6-12 months to meet that large need out there?" Brockett asks. What are we doing for those folks?

Firnhaber answering... this should be good. And by good, I mean bad.

"Basically 7,000 individuals have gone through Coordinated Entry" in 5 years, Firnhaber says. We think 25% don't go through, so that's 10,000 people experiencing homelessness in Boulder.

We've got 3,500 units of affordable housing in Boulder. With ownership units, that's 4,500 units.

"If we took all of our housing and dedicated it to homelessness, we'd only have half the housing we need," Firnhaber says.

No city can solve homelessness, Firnhaber says. "That's the frustration we have. Despite the successes, we still have these challenges. The community doesn't see the success, bc once a person is housed, you don't see that."

"We don't have the resources," Firnhaber says, to house all the people experiencing homelessness in Boulder. We have to make our resources go the furthest they can.

Firnhaber: We have a diversion program that's going better than last year, to send ppl back to communities they came from. That's a program that "needs to grow."

That was better than I thought it would be. Apologies for pre-emptively judging him; I've been working with him for years. As good as he is on housing, his takes on homelessness are always frustrating AF bc I can't get them to square with the data or any other experts anywhere.

Folkerts asking for what I missed earlier: How many ppl are currently on our by-name list? And did you say we're going to reach functional zero by the end of the year?

Grove clarifying: It's for veterans specifically.

Grove: 21 homeless veterans currently. "That number is going to drop significantly" bc they're already matched to housing, and we just need to get them in.

Once we hit functional zero for veterans, Grove says, we will move into single adults — the much larger population, and more difficult (bc there are slightly more resources for veterans)

Folkerts: How many adult individuals do we have on our by-name list?

Newton guesses: I believe it's around 350

But that's great news on veteran homelessness! Yay!

To clarify, that's countywide, not just Boulder. I bet that new tiny home community in Longmont helped in a big way with that. Yay for Veterans Community Project! veteranscommunityproject.org/vcp-colorado

That's why covering homelessness, and these threads, are so difficult, bc there's so much. Like YAY veteran homelessness decreasing, but BOO family homelessness is increasing (that's our next discussion). Plus all the numbers and data and such.

Speer: I see we have 19 new landlords renting to formerly homeless folks. How many landlords have stopped?

Grove: We don't know if someone stops unless someone loses housing, but we have more landlords in our database than last year or the year before.

Another yay!

Speer: Most of the counties in the Metro Denver Homeless Initiative combine their data, and BoCo does, so we can't track ppl moving around the region. Why is there a dif mechanism for tracking folks here, and why is that dataset not available to everyone working on homelessness?

^ Big question I've never been able to satisfactorily explore, but a big complaint of providers, and what they say is a huge stumbling block to tackling homelessness

Grove: The Metro Denver system (HMIS) didn't have the functions we wanted a few years ago. But we do share, and we're going to be able to integrate them, and bring more providers into our system.

Speer: Bc there's so much movement around the region, it would be good to have that data.

Grove: Most ppl new to the community are from Denver, and those are the folks that attrition out more frequently.

That's something staff have long known, but I probably haven't covered adequately: Lots of new ppl coming in, but they are also lots of people leaving. 4 in and 4 out every day, on average. They don't stay very long.

Learn more here: boulderbeat.news/2022/08/27/are…

Actually from that story ^ a Firnhaber quote: About 50% of Boulder Shelter clients stayed less than 7 nights per year. Half of those stayed only one night per year.

Yates: It seems like there are a lot of ppl spending a short time in our county and moving on?

Firnhaber: Correct.

Firnhaber: "The CE numbers, they go up and down per month, but they've stayed relatively stable over the last few years, and gone up over the last few months."

Yates picking up on that thread: If we've got 1,400 new people coming into Boulder every year, and 1,400 people leaving every year, roughly, I assume that's not the cohort you're trying to provide housing to, right?

Firnhaber: What you're getting at is probably correct. The individuals who are most successful in getting housed are staying connected to services. Many of them are staying at the shelter, and stay for a period of time long enough to get housing.

We are not meeting our goal of reducing the time people spend in homelessness, Firnhaber says. They're on waiting lists.

It's not uncommon for folks to wait 3 years for housing.

Benjamin: Why are only Longmont and Boulder part of HSBC? Why aren't the other cities partnering?

Firnhaber: They're the only cities with HHS departments. The other cities don't have staff that work on homelessness.

Boulder County represents the work of those cities, Firnhaber says, and provides more countywide support. We have the same challenge with affordable housing, although those cities are more involved on that.

Grove: It is a capacity issue. "The data, the numbers of those coming from other municipalities is very small. Less than maybe 2% combined, across the entire county. It's predominantly Longmont and Boulder."

OK, we're gonna jump to another thread for family homelessness, but I'll come back to talk about encampment removals.

Last section of the night: Encampment removals, or SAMPS as the city calls it.

Staff presentation: documents.bouldercolorado.gov/WebLink/DocVie…

Boulder has been removing camps ever since it's had a camping ban in 1980 (except for a couple brief timeouts) but the new approach is less than 2 years and a few million in.
boulderbeat.news/2022/06/11/hom…

It includes an in-house removal team, more cops specifically for removals, urban park rangers and downtown ambassadors.

836 campsites have been cleared, but they almost always re-establish elsewhere. City still not tracking that, but they are admitting it.

Had to delete a couple tweets bc I missed something incredibly important in the notes. My b; I try not to do that.

The city is averaging 55 removals per month

Encampment reports have increased 140% year-over-year.

Note that is *reports* not number of encampments. (That's what I missed in the notes.)

Staff offered this statement but no actual evidence to support it: "There is evidence that, without the work of the SAMPS team, there would certainly be more unsanctioned camping."

I mean, maybe, but we've been removing encampments for 43 years now, and I wouldn't exactly say there are fewer camps now...

Not too long after saying there is evidence that removals are working, staff wrote that they are tweaking their protocols "in light of the continued escalation of unsanctioned camping."

Police Chief Maris Herold up to talk about crime and encampments.

"In the last 2 years, crimes has been relatively stable," she says.

Crime is trending downward over the past 5 years, Herold says. "Despite these downward trends, crime is still heavily concentrated in these areas."

BPD has 4 officers dedicated to encampment removals, and 2 officers on the Homeless Outreach Team, who are "mostly" non-enforcement, and often provide transport services to appointments, etc.

BPD has given out 1,300 camping, tent or propane tank tickets in the past 3 years.

I took so many more notes on this, but we're flying through the presentation, so I don't have time. Sorry!

Utilities director Joe Tadeucci talking about the 72-hour notice and requests to not give that notice near schools. boulderbeat.news/2023/02/06/sch…

Tadeucci: "Something has definitely changed" in the last 4-6 months. We are not getting voluntary compliance during encampment removals. When people do move, they set up again very close by.

Just to clarify, 72-hour notice does not apply to confiscating tents or propane tanks. And the city doesn't use it if encampments are blocking right-of-way on paths or sidewalks. 10% of those do, Ali Rhodes said earlier. (Parks & Red head)

Removal teams are just starting to more clearly communicate rules around access, and tents and tanks. Voluntary compliance is coming back over the last couple weeks, Tadeucci says. (These staff notes were prepared a few weeks ago.)

"Addiction is a really big challenge," Tadeucci says. "Other than collecting needles" — 36% of encampments have them; 81K needles removed so far — our team can't really address addiction.

Tadeucci speaking to the community divide on this issue. "At times, we're working against one another," he says. The four dept directors involved in encampment removals — HHS, Police, Parks, Utilities — are brainstorming with the city manager on that.

I like that he brought that up, bc that *is* the central tension if you're trying to base interventions on data, best practices and expert advice. Bc removals work against ending homelessness, by eroding trust, creating disruption, loss of documents, etc.

That being said, leaving people in encampments alone isn't recommended either: a HUD mega-study of approaches found that connections to services worked best.

Per staff notes: "The biggest enforcement tool the city staff has is in the form of ticketing, which is not effective when there are no housing or reunification alternatives to camping."

Yates: Is it possible to have the 72-hour notice waived for someone who is repeatedly camping in the same area, those ppl just moving shortly away? Is there a legal mechanism to ban them from a zone for a time?

Llanes: We don't provide additional notice if people just move a couple feet away.

Yates: "Is there a point where they're such a repeat offender the judge could say you can't be in this place for a period of time?"
Llanes: "We are looking at the use of exclusion orders."

Call me crazy, but I assume if someone continues to be ticketed for living outside, it's because they continue to ... live outside? I'm not really sure — and by not really sure, I mean 1,000% sure — banning them will magically make them not homeless...?

Folkerts digging into the weeds on how far a person would have to move their tent away to not run afoul of that.

Llanes and Joe Tadeucci: We give notice for a particular area, and they are usually marked with signs that describe the area.

For example, from 9th to 17th or Canyon and Arapahoe.

"We do try to specifically define the area," Tadeucci says.

Joseph: These parks are public spaces. Can we ban community members from public spaces? Are we running into Constitutional issues? We can ask them not to conduct the activity they're conducting, but to ban the person physically.....?

Llanes: Without getting into legal advice, I'd say we have a camping law, and it's been passed legislatively, and we believe it is Constitutional, and that's been our position.

Brockett: I don't think we're preventing people from being in a park. We're not telling anybody they can't sit in a park.

Llanes: That's correct.
But she also said they were looking into exclusionary orders, to exclude ppl from an area....? Am I crazy?

Daniel Reinhard, BPD's data analyst: 25 reports this year of propane tanks, more than in previous years at this time

Herold: Obviously we can't confiscate something in a tent without a warrant, but if it's outside we confiscate it. Most times no one claims it.

Speer asking about something I didn't tweet about: The city's outreach team, BTHERE. Is that really the best use of resources when Feet Forward has 2X the impact? (Speer also volunteers there) Reading some stats I don't know about FF.

Benjamin: Do we have any sense of how many people living illegally might go to a sanctioned campground? How many have a voucher or are approved for housing, but can't find a unit?

Firnhaber: "Yes, there are individuals who go straight from living outside into housing. It's not a big number."

"Thank you for highlighting the work of Feet Forward," he says to Speer. "They play a role as well. I'm hoping some of the services they provide can be provided at the day center as well."

There are 7 other orgs that provide outreach in addition to FF and the city team, he says. It takes all different approaches.

That's the end of tonight's homelessness discussion. Again, just a study session. No vote.

I might add some Thoughts in the morning, or maybe I'll save them for Homelessness 101.

@threadreaderapp please unroll. Thanks!