This commentary is by Harold Niedzielski and Bob Yates. Niedzielski and Yates serve on the board of directors of All Roads, which operates Boulder’s principal homeless shelter, in North Boulder. Yates is a former member of the Boulder City Council. Niedzielski is a CPFS community peer recovery navigator in Boulder County; he was formerly homeless.
We have a compassionate and generous community. But we cannot help everybody. While that might seem like an obvious thing to say, our community has been trying to do the impossible. We have been providing long-term shelter to any homeless person who shows up at our door, regardless of how long they have been in Boulder County.
Our community’s experience with that policy has been this: About one-third of the people who come to the All Roads homeless shelter became homeless in Boulder County; about one-third became homeless elsewhere in Colorado; and the remaining one-third became homeless outside of Colorado.
This is not sustainable. Because of capacity limits at the 160-bed homeless shelter in North Boulder, our generous policy has resulted in us turning away people with long ties and deep roots in Boulder County. Some nights, there are only one or two turnaways. Other nights, more than a dozen people cannot be accommodated because the shelter is filled to capacity, including with people who recently arrived in town.
Last year, it broke our hearts to turn away nearly 2,400 people who sought shelter from the elements. We need to modify our practices so that we turn away fewer people who need our help.
So, after operating Boulder’s principal homeless shelter for 44 years, All Roads is changing how we do things.
Starting next month, those who arrive from outside Boulder County while homeless will be allowed to stay at the shelter for a maximum of 10 days. This should be adequate time for them to make more permanent arrangements. If needed, All Roads will help these people with transportation to a place where housing or other shelter can be confirmed. And if the new policy does not work as expected, we will make adjustments.
This “rapid exit” approach was recommended by nationwide homelessness experts Clutch Consulting Group in their report to the City of Boulder last August. In response to the Clutch recommendations, the city challenged All Roads to significantly cut the average number of days a person resides at the shelter, so that we turn away fewer people. We will do this by prioritizing those with Boulder County connections. Those arriving from elsewhere will be helped to reach their next destination, which sometimes will be back where they came from.
Now, let us be clear about what is and is not changing. First, the change in protocol by All Roads will apply only during warmer weather months, between May and October. Second, people whose homelessness arose in Boulder County will not be affected. Third, anyone already living at the shelter will be grandfathered and likewise will not be affected. Finally, we will continue to provide day services to anyone who seeks them. Only overnight sheltering will be changed.
Some may assert that limiting a person who arrives here homeless to only 10 days’ stay at the All Roads shelter is a policy that lacks compassion. But we would observe that it is likewise unfortunate when we must turn away a local person who became homeless in our community simply because someone who has arrived from somewhere else has taken one of the limited number of shelter beds.
All Roads is an independent nonprofit with finite resources. We must allocate those resources in a way that is fair, compassionate and effective, for the benefit of people who are experiencing homelessness, as well as for those of us who are fortunate to be housed. We need to ask ourselves whether it is a good use of limited funds to provide long-term shelter to people who have no connections to our community.
The U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness and HUD recommend rapid exit and diversion as the best ways to decrease street homelessness, transience between cities and a community’s cost of providing homelessness services. Cities as diverse as Newark, Houston and San Francisco have adopted these policies. It is time for Boulder to embrace best practices.
Each year, All Roads helps hundreds of people permanently exit homelessness, including 29 people last month alone. Yet the number of unhoused people present in our community never seems to decrease. In part, that is because for every person we help become permanently housed, another person seeking shelter arrives from out of town. It is a cycle we cannot escape unless we make a change.
That change is happening now. We believe that as word of this new approach spreads, fewer people will come to Boulder seeking shelter. And we hope that this change results in more communities taking care of their own, just as we will take care of ours.